ed a remonstrance.

'It went to my heart, Miss, it did. They're such a lot, young and old, all
alike thieves and vagabonds, and many a poor body wanting.'

'Tut, Mary, never mind. Everyone has her fortune told some time in her
life, and you can't have a good one without paying. I think, Mary, we must
be near Bartram now.'

The road now traversed the side of a steep hill, parallel to which,
along the opposite side of a winding river, rose the dark steeps of a
corresponding upland, covered with forest that looked awful and dim in the
deep shadow, while the moonlight rippled fitfully upon the stream beneath.

'It seems to be a beautiful country,' I said to Mary Quince, who was
munching a sandwich in the corner, and thus appealed to, adjusted her
bonnet, and made an inspection from _her_ window, which, however, commanded
nothing but the heathy slope of the hill whose side we were traversing.

'Well, Miss, I suppose it is; but there's a deal o' mountains--is not
there?'

And so saying, honest Mary leaned back again, and went on with her
sandwich.

We were now descending at a great pace. I knew we were coming near. I stood
up as well as I could in the carriage, to see over the postilions' heads.
I was eager, but frightened too; agitated as the crisis of the arrival and
meeting approached. At last, a long stretch of comparatively level
country below us, with masses of wood as well as I could see irregularly
overspreading it, became visible as the narrow valley through which we were
speeding made a sudden bend.

Down we drove, and now I did perceive a change. A great grass-grown
park-wall, overtopped with mighty trees; but still on and on we came at a
canter that seemed almost a gallop. The old grey park-wall flanking us at
one side, and a pretty pastoral hedgerow of ash-trees, irregularly on the
other.

At last the postilions began to draw bridle, and at a slight angle, the
moon shining full upon them, we wheeled into a wide semicircle formed by
the receding park-walls, and halted before a great fantastic iron gate, and
a pair of tall fluted piers, of white stone, all grass-grown and ivy-bound,
with great cornices, surmounted with shields and supporters, the Ruthyn
bearings washed by the rains of Derbyshire for many a generation of
Ruthyns, almost smooth by this time, and looking bleached and phantasmal,
like giant sentinels, with each a hand clasped in his comrade's, to bar
our passage to the enchanted castle--the f