ound, it
vanished through an arrow-slit into the interior. This fossil of
feudalism, then, was the journey's-end of the wire, and not the village
of Sleeping-Green.

There was a certain unexpectedness in the fact that the hoary memorial
of a stolid antagonism to the interchange of ideas, the monument of hard
distinctions in blood and race, of deadly mistrust of one's neighbour in
spite of the Church's teaching, and of a sublime unconsciousness of
any other force than a brute one, should be the goal of a machine which
beyond everything may be said to symbolize cosmopolitan views and the
intellectual and moral kinship of all mankind. In that light the little
buzzing wire had a far finer significance to the student Somerset than
the vast walls which neighboured it. But the modern fever and fret which
consumes people before they can grow old was also signified by the wire;
and this aspect of to-day did not contrast well with the fairer side
of feudalism--leisure, light-hearted generosity, intense friendships,
hawks, hounds, revels, healthy complexions, freedom from care, and such
a living power in architectural art as the world may never again see.

Somerset withdrew till neither the singing of the wire nor the hisses of
the irritable owls could be heard any more. A clock in the castle struck
ten, and he recognized the strokes as those he had heard when sitting
on the stile. It was indispensable that he should retrace his steps and
push on to Sleeping-Green if he wished that night to reach his lodgings,
which had been secured by letter at a little inn in the straggling line
of roadside houses called by the above name, where his luggage had by
this time probably arrived. In a quarter of an hour he was again at the
point where the wire left the road, and following the highway over a
hill he saw the hamlet at his feet.

III.

By half-past ten the next morning Somerset was once more approaching
the precincts of the building which had interested him the night before.
Referring to his map he had learnt that it bore the name of Stancy
Castle or Castle de Stancy; and he had been at once struck with its
familiarity, though he had never understood its position in the county,
believing it further to the west. If report spoke truly there was
some excellent vaulting in the interior, and a change of study from
ecclesiastical to secular Gothic was not unwelcome for a while.

The entrance-gate was open now, and under the archway t