tood the castle. About a
gun-shot to the south was a small village, which had, probably, in
ancient days, sprung up beneath its protection. A kind of awe came over
me as I approached the old building. The sun no longer shone upon it,
and it looked so grim, so desolate and solitary; and here was I, in that
wild country, alone with that grim building before me. The village was
within sight, it is true; but it might be a village of the dead for what
I knew; no sound issued from it, no smoke was rising from its roofs,
neither man nor beast was visible, no life, no motion--it looked as
desolate as the castle itself. Yet I was bent on the adventure, and
moved on towards the castle across the green plain, occasionally casting
a startled glance around me; and now I was close to it.

It was surrounded by a quadrangular wall, about ten feet in height, with
a square tower at each corner. At first I could discover no entrance;
walking round, however, to the northern side, I found a wide and lofty
gateway with a tower above it, similar to those at the angles of the
wall; on this side the ground sloped gently down towards the bog, which
was here skirted by an abundant growth of copse-wood and a few evergreen
oaks. I passed through the gateway, and found myself within a square
enclosure of about two acres. On one side rose a round and lofty keep,
or donjon, with a conical roof, part of which had fallen down, strewing
the square with its ruins. Close to the keep, on the other side, stood
the remains of an oblong house, built something in the modern style, with
various window-holes; nothing remained but the bare walls and a few
projecting stumps of beams, which seemed to have been half burnt. The
interior of the walls was blackened, as if by fire; fire also appeared at
one time to have raged out of the window-holes, for the outside about
them was black, portentously so. 'I wonder what has been going on here?'
I exclaimed.

There were echoes among the walls as I walked about the court. I entered
the keep by a low and frowning doorway: the lower floor consisted of a
large dungeon-like room, with a vaulted roof; on the left hand was a
winding staircase in the thickness of the wall; it looked anything but
inviting; yet I stole softly up, my heart beating. On the top of the
first flight of stairs was an arched doorway, to the left was a dark
passage, to the right, stairs leading still higher. I stepped under the
arch and found