during a considerable time. The path to it lay across the
rivulet and past the mill; from which point we could either journey
through the fields below the old castle, and the wood which surrounded
it, or along a road at the other side of the ruin, close to the gateway
of which it passed. The former track led through two or three beautiful
fields, the sylvan domain of the keep on one hand, and the brook on the
other; while an oak or two, like giant warders advanced from the wood,
broke the sunshine of the green with a soft and graceful shadow. How
often, on my way to school, have I stopped beneath the tree to collect
the fallen acorns; how often run down to the stream to pluck a branch of
the hawthorn which hung over the water! The road which passed the castle
joined, beyond these fields, the path which traversed them. It took, I
well remember, a certain solemn and mysterious interest from the ruin.
The shadow of the archway, the discolorizations of time on all the
walls, the dimness of the little thicket which encircled it, the
traditions of its immeasurable age, made St. Quentin's Castle a
wonderful and awful fabric in the imagination of a child; and long after
I last saw its mouldering roughness, I never read of fortresses, or
heights, or spectres, or banditti, without connecting them with the one
ruin of my childhood.

"It was close to this spot that one of the few adventures occurred
which marked, in my mind, my boyish days with importance. When loitering
beyond the castle, on the way to school, with a brother somewhat older
than myself, who was uniformly my champion and protector, we espied a
round sloe high up in the hedge-row. We determined to obtain it; and
I do not remember whether both of us, or only my brother, climbed the
tree. However, when the prize was all but reached,--and no alchemist
ever looked more eagerly for the moment of projection which was to give
him immortality and omnipotence,--a gruff voice startled us with an
oath, and an order to desist; and I well recollect looking back, for
long after, with terror to the vision of an old and ill-tempered
farmer, armed with a bill-hook, and vowing our decapitation; nor did I
subsequently remember without triumph the eloquence whereby alone, in my
firm belief, my brother and myself had been rescued from instant death.

"At the entrance of the little town stood an old gateway, with a pointed
arch and decaying battlements. It gave admittance to the street wh