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