le by an army on the land and by a
fleet of galleys on the lake, and in due time they took it. They let all
the prisoners which they found confined there go free, and since then
they have used the castle as a place of storage for arms and ammunition.

One of the halls which the boys went into, the guide said, used to be a
senate house, and another was the court room where the prisoners were
tried. There was a staircase which led from the court room down to the
dungeon below, where the great black beam was, from which they were to
be hung.

The boys, however, did not pay a great deal of attention to what the
guide said about the former uses of these rooms. They seemed to be much
more interested in the purposes that they were now serving, and so went
about examining very eagerly the great brass cannons and the ammunition
wagons that stood in them.

At length, however, they came to something which specially attracted
their attention. It was a small room, which the guide said was an
ancient torturing room. There was a large wooden post in the centre of
the room, extending from the floor to the vault above. The post was worn
and blackened by time and decay, and there were various hooks, and
staples, and pulleys attached to it at different heights, which the
guide said were used for securing the prisoners to the post, when they
were to be tortured. The post itself was burned in many places, as if by
hot irons.

The boys saw another place in a room beyond, which was in some respects
still more dreadful than this. It was a place where there was an
opening in the floor, near the wall of the room, that looked like a trap
door. There was the beginning of a stone stair leading down. A small
railing was built round the opening, as if to keep people from falling
in. The boys all crowded round the railing, and looked down.

They saw that the stair only went down three steps, and then it came to
a sudden end, and all below was a dark and dismal pit, which seemed
bottomless. On looking more intently, however, they could at length see
a glimmer of light, and hear the rippling of the waves of the lake, at a
great depth below. The guide said that this was one of the _oubliettes_,
that is, a place where men could be destroyed secretly, and in such a
manner that no one should ever know what became of them. They were
conducted to this door, and directed to go down. It was dark, so that
they could only see the first steps of the stair. Th