ack, and set myself to swim beside him, leading
him by the bridle. But even thus he proved unequal to the task of
resisting the current, so that in the end I let him go, and swam ashore
alone, hoping that he would land farther down, and that I might then
recapture him. When, however, I had reached the opposite bank, and stood
under the shadow of the chateau, I discovered that the cowardly beast
had turned back, and, having scrambled out, was now trotting away
along the path by which we had come. Having no mind to go after him, I
resigned myself to the loss, and turned my attention to the mansion now
before me.

Some two hundred yards from the river it raised its great square bulk
against the background of black, star-flecked sky. From the facade
before me down to the spot where I stood by the water, came a flight
of half a dozen terraces, each balustraded in white marble, ending in
square, flat-topped pillars of Florentine design. What moon there was
revealed the quaint architecture of that stately edifice and glittered
upon the mullioned windows. But within nothing stirred; no yellow
glimmer came to clash with the white purity of the moonlight; no sound
of man or beast broke the stillness of the night, for all that the hour
was early. The air of the place was as that of some gigantic sepulchre.
A little daunted by this all-enveloping stillness, I skirted the
terraces and approached the house on the eastern side. Here I found an
old-world drawbridge--now naturally in disuse--spanning a ditch fed
from the main river for the erstwhile purposes of a moat. I crossed the
bridge, and entered an imposing courtyard. Within this quadrangle the
same silence dwelt, and there was the same obscurity in the windows that
overlooked it. I paused, at a loss how to proceed, and I leaned against
a buttress of the portcullis, what time I considered.

I was weak from fasting, worn with hard riding, and faint from the wound
in my shoulder, which had been the cause at least of my losing some
blood. In addition to all this, I was shivering with the cold of my wet
garments, and generally I must have looked as little like that Bardelys
they called the Magnificent as you might well conceive. How, then, if I
were to knock, should I prevail in persuading these people--whoever they
might be--of my identity? Infinitely more had I the air of some fugitive
rebel, and it was more than probable that I should be kept in durance
to be handed over to my fr