cast by her silvery light might harbour any terror.

It is easy enough to be philosophic at home in a chair beside the
lamp. Under those circumstances, the Abbe had reflected that no one
would rob him, because he possessed nothing worth stealing. But
now, out here in the dark, he recalled a hundred instances of wanton
murder duly recorded in the newspaper which he shared with three
parishioners in Gemosac.

He paused to wipe his brow with a blue cotton handkerchief before
pushing open the gate, and, being alone, was not too proud to peep
through the keyhole before laying his shoulder against the solid and
weather-beaten oak. He glanced nervously at the loopholes in the
flanking towers and upward at the machicolated battlement
overhanging him, as if any crumbling peep-hole might harbour
gleaming eyes. He hurried through the passage beneath the vaulted
roof without daring to glance to either side, where doorways and
steps to the towers were rendered more fearsome by heavy curtains of
ivy.

The enceinte of the castle of Gemosac is three-sided, with four
towers jutting out at the corners, from which to throw a flanking
fire upon any who should raise a ladder against the great curtains,
built of that smooth, white stone which is quarried at Brantome and
on the banks of the Dordogne. The fourth side of the enceinte
stands on a solid rock, above the little river that loses itself in
the flat-lands bordering the Gironde, so that it can scarce be
called a tributary of that wide water. A moss-grown path round the
walls will give a quick walker ten minutes' exercise to make the
round from one tower of the gateway to the other.