that bound her little hands and feet lay in white dust upon the
sunken bones.

"You see!" said the old man, wiping his torn hands on his robe. "The
corner-stones were laid for safety on the body of a murdered
innocent. Your Stronghold is founded on cruelty. This is the root."

The young lord's face went white as death. "Horrible!" he cried. "But
what to do?"

"Do away with it!" said the Nothingarian. "That is the only thing.
Come!"

He went out into the night and the young lord followed him, the sudden
impulse to strong action leaping in his heart and pounding in his
temples and ringing in his ears, like a madness.

They passed around behind the great tower, where it stood close to the
last pinnacle of the rock and rose above it, bolted to the high crest
of stone by an iron bar.

"Here is the clutch of your Stronghold," said the old man urgently.
"Break that and all goes down. Dare you strike to the root?"

"I dare," he cried, "for I must. A thing built on cruelty, cemented
with blood, and worm-eaten with lies is hateful to me as to God."

He lifted the pick and struck. Once! and the castle trembled to its
base and the servants ran out at the doors. Twice! and the tower
swayed and a cry of fear arose. Thrice! and the huge walls of
Stronghold rocked and crashed and thundered down upon the sleeping
town, burying it in wild ruin!

Dead silence for an instant--and then, through the cloud of dust that
hung above the flattened houses, came a lamentable tumult. Voices of
men and women and little children, shrieking in fear, groaning with
pain, whimpering for pity, moaning in mortal anguish, rose like smoke
from the pit beneath the wreck of Stronghold.

The young lord listened, dizzy and sick with horror. Then he looked at
the Nothingarian whose eyes glittered wildly. He swung up the pickaxe
again.

"Curse you," he cried, "why didn't you tell me of this?" And he split
his head down to the beard.

[Illustration]

IN the ODOUR of SANCTITY

_Mortem suscepit cantando_

[Illustration]

Last of all, the crouching plague leaped upon the Count Angelo (whose
women and boon companions already lay dead around him in his castle of
Montefeltro), and dragged him from the banquet-hall of many delights
into the dim alley of the grave. There he looked, as it were through a
door half open, into the shapeless horror of the face of Death, which
turns all desires into stone. But even while he looked, the teeth of
the