sentinel, to keep the door of the castle. He had a table on one
side, with various engravings spread out upon it, representing
different views of the castle, both of the interior and of the exterior.
There were also little books of description, giving an account of the
castle and of its history, and copies of Byron's poem, the Prisoner of
Chillon. All these things were for sale to the visitors who should come
to see the castle.

The engravings were kept from being blown away by the wind by means of
little stone paper weights made of rounded pebble stones, about as large
as the palm of the hand, with views of the castle and of the surrounding
scenery painted on them. The paper weights were for sale too.

The boys looked at these things a moment, but did not seem to pay much
attention to them. They walked on, following their teacher, to the end
of the bridge room, where they came to the great castle gates. These
were open, too, and they went in. They found themselves in a paved
courtyard, with towers, and battlements, and lofty walls all around
them. There was a man there, waiting to receive them in charge, and show
them into the dungeons.

He led the way through a door, and thence down a flight of stone steps
to a series of subterranean chambers, which were very dimly lighted by
little windows opening towards the lake. The back sides of the rooms
consisted of the living rock; the front sides were formed of the castle
wall that bordered the lake.

"Here is the room," said the guide, "where the prisoners who were
condemned to death in the castle in former times spent the last night
before their execution. That stone was the bed where they had to lie."

So saying, the guide pointed to a broad, smooth, and sloping surface of
rock, which was formed by the ledge on the back side of the dungeon. The
stone was part of the solid ledge, and was surrounded with ragged crags,
just as they had been left by the excavators in making the dungeon; but
whether the smooth and sloping surface of this particular portion of the
rock was natural or artificial, that is, whether it had been expressly
made so to form a bed for the poor condemned criminal, or whether the
rock had accidentally broken into that form by means of some natural
fissure, and so had been appropriated by the governor of the castle to
that use, the boys could not determine.

The guide led the boys a little farther on, to a place where there was a
dark recess, and poi