o his touch and swung shut
behind him. He passed into vault-like silence.

The stone steps gave back the sound of his tread as he mounted, with
eerie, wandering echoes. The grey walls glimmered with a ghostly
desolation around him. Halfway up, he stopped to flick the ash from his
cigar, and laughed aloud. But the echoes of his laughter sounded like
voices crying in the darkness. He went on more swiftly, like a phantom
imprisoned and seeking escape. The echoes met him and fell away behind
him. The loneliness was like a curse. The very air felt dead.

He reached the top of the turret at last, and the heavy door that gave
upon the ramparts. With a sound that was almost a gasp, he pushed it
open, and passed out into the open air.

A full moon was shining, and his acres lay below him--a wonderful picture
in black and silver. He came to the first gap in the battlements, mounted
the parapet, and stood there with a hand resting on each side.

The wash of the sea came murmurously through the September silence.
His restless eyes flashed hither and thither over the quiet scene, taking
in every detail, lingering nowhere. The pine trees stirred in the
distance below him, seeming to whisper together, and an owl hooted with a
weird persistence down by the lake. It was like the calling of a human
voice--almost like a cry of distress. Then it ceased, and the trees were
still again.

The spell of the silence fell like the falling of a curtain. The
loneliness crept about his heart.

He took the cigar from his mouth and spoke, ironically, grimly.

"There is your kingdom, Charles Rex!" he said.

He turned with the words and leaped down upon the narrow walk between the
battlements. The owl began to call again, but the desolation remained. He
paced forward with his hands behind him, his head bent. No one could see
him here. The garment of mockery could be flung aside. He was like a
prisoner tramping the stone walls from which he could never escape.

He paused once to toss away his cigar, but he did not look out again over
the fair prospect of his lands. He was looking at other things, seeing
the vast emptiness of a life that had never been worth while stretching
behind and before him. Like a solitary traveller pausing in the heart of
the desert, he stood to view the barrenness around him.

He had travelled far, had pursued many a quest with ardour; but the
ardour had all gone out of him now. Only the empty solitude remained. He
had