him to light that fire in which he might melt up all the rusty bars and dungeon-grates of his castle into the most precious metal, gold, why thou wilt have as roaring a welcome from him as his spare habits will admit, or as fiends may provide. For he keeps no householdsave devils."

"And he is suspected to be Mulciber or Moloch," said a grey-headed sire. “But beware of thy tongue, neighbour Franz, for it may get thee into trouble. The Count has gibbets."

"He has a daughter," added a woman, after some pause, to the soldier; "and, wonderful to say, ugly as the Count Daduk is, she is reported to be a miracle of beauty. And she sits, up yonder in her father's Castle of Terror, only as a sort of angel in a dragon's den— and calm like one."

"I must on, then-ignorant and brutish people. I have that which shall procure me welcome from worse men than this mere ill-natured and churlish nobleman— for such I read him through your superstitious exaggerations. And on my way down the mountain, to-morrow, I will remember your unkindness-for my remembrance, merely, may be perhaps revenge. And I cannot avenge otherwise your ill-treatment of me. Part from around me then, ye cowardly and inhospitable tribe. When I come down, you shall have (perhaps) again a word of me."

"If you ever, indeed, do come down again," said Abel Tiak; a sinister member of this community of half gipsies, half peasants.

"There are few fowls that wing down again from that gibbet-stone when they have once perched upon it," called out to him one of the villagers, named Yokel, after the traveller had gone on, and pointing exultingly to the grim castle on the rocks, which had now a cloud over it. And grim it looked indeed.

"I am protected by more beneficent powers than those you invoke." And the old pilgrim-soldier went on his way up the hill, with a staff in his hand which assisted his steps over the rough ground.

He found the path so rugged, and the way on ac

count of the precipices was so dangerous, that he was a long time before he had mastered much distance. Darkgreen woods of pines, mingled with some gigantic spreading trees, were dispersed about him. The deep gold light gleamed on the many grey faces of the rock, and gilded the uprights of several rough wooden defensible bridges which he crossed; where the water flashed and sparkled redly and angrily, as if hurrying into a fire-sparkling lake of Tartarus. Overhead-now

seen, now lost, as the cliff-battlements and the wood alternately opened-showed the savage towers of the Count's castle. There was perfect silence except for the tinkling of a stream when the traveller had left the larger water. But now and then a strange hoarse grumble of thunder, like a huge wild beast in the distant woods, for a moment aroused, and then shaking itself off to sleep again, was heard dubiously rising

from the sombre face of the country; which was just as Salvator Rosa might have imagined it.

And, by-and-by, with much toil and pains, and when it had grown nearly dark, the old man, after crossing two mountain drawbridges, with wooden supports and iron chains, reached the huge yawning ugly gateway of this forbidding hold. Monstrous old worm-eaten gates, as if hewn out of the planks of some giant catafalque, and covered all over with bosses and clumps of red iron, interposed to forbid further passage. Maximilian (for that was the old soldier's name) looked about him for some time in trouble and perplexity as to the manner in which he might make his desire for admittance known. He felt a creeping sort of fear, too, which terribly diminished his confidence; it inspired even dread as to his present personal safety. And directing his gaze downward almost with a feeling of fright that he was where he was, his eyes travelled wistfully over an expanse of lovely country with thunderclouds glooming the greater part of it; and he saw the silver crescent of the new moon at the edge of one of the largest dark clouds. But he gathered more courage; and now going back into the shadows of the gateway under an enormous old Gothic portcullis which was all mouldered and dropping in heaps of rust, he caught sight of a metal horn, so large that it might have hung at the gate of the castle of the giant in "Jack the Giant Killer." This he seized to blow, and to summon some one to answer him. He was, with all that he had seen and suffered, so faint, hungry, and we may now fairly say frightened (for all he saw and more that he dreaded was sufficient to alarm), that at first the horn refused to give any murmur for his attempt to sound it. In fact, so heavy was it and so tired he felt, that it almost dropped like a half-ton of iron out of his hands. But at last, after several trials, there came a dreadful noise out of the horn, almost as if a voice of itself. The blast of the horn burst, as it were, preternaturally on the silence and startled one awfully; thundering round and round in the hollow archway, and even seeming to make the ground tremble under the feet, and causing the

"CAUGHT IN THE TOILS."

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chains to clash which were hung in festoons high within the gate. Looking up he saw three dead heads on either side of the dark archway.

"May the gracious powers be good to me!" ejaculated the old soldier with a shudder. "Those are surely human heads; and this frowning gateway is indeed the introduction to a hold of horrors. Horrors of which those heads are doubtless the unspeaking but the best witnesses."

If it had been possible Maximilian would even then have quietly withdrawn in the shadows, slipped ́ unperceived down the mountain in the dark side of the battlements which coiled in descent down the steep slopes into the shaggy and gloomy woods, and left the dreadful horn to answer itself. But slipping away in this safe and unperceived manner was now impossible; and at this moment, trembling with terror at the invisible, Maximilian awaited what the adventure should present; and what strange and perhaps giant shapes should come in answer to his blowing of the horn. A horn more tremendous perhaps than that of the Paladin Orlando himself.

There was no doubt that Maximilian's uncertainty in regard to the strange, uncomfortable sights which might present themselves from this alarming gateway of this very terrible castle, was most trying. Even the silence seemed unusually deep; as if expectant of some change which might have exciting effect upon a listener. Of real indubitable objects-formidable though they might be of flesh and blood, Maximilian, as a soldier, had no fear; although he felt now feeble. But in the delay, and in the mystery of what might be preparing, or what might come, lay the discomposure. So the old soldier looked with penetrating, wary, excited eyes right and left of him. And he peered close over his shoulder very often, as if he thought an Ugly Thing might steal-up behind and startle him unprepared. The surprises, if any, that were preparing, would how. ever take their own time; and all the impatience 24 the world would not compel disclosure too soon.

Maximilian was kept waiting a very long time

(during which the growls of distant thunder were all that had meaning), before any response was made to his summons of the horn. But by-and-by a lancet

"Food and shelter!-seek it of the bears, then. For you have no
entertainment here."

window, deep within the arch, was thrown open, and the huge African head of a black janitor, with crisped hair and great gold earrings in his ears, was thrust out. Maximilian started.