iles, which they also
put in the chimneys amongst rude masses of mortar: and these great dark
holes remained always mysterious to those that looked for mystery in
the family that whiled away the ages in that castle. And by every
fireplace two queer carved creatures stood upholding the mantlepiece,
with mystery in their faces and curious limbs, uniting the hearth with
fable and with tales told in the wood. Years after the men that carved
them were all dust the shadows of these creatures would come out and
dance in the room, on wintry nights when all the lamps were gone and
flames stole out and flickered above the smouldering logs.

In the second storey one great saloon ran all the length of the castle.
In it was a long table with eight legs that had carvings of roses
rambling along its edges: the table and its legs were all of one piece
with the floor. They would never have hollowed the great trunk in time
had they not used fire. The second storey was barely complete on the
day that Rodriguez and Don Alderon and Morano came to the chains that
guarded the park. And the King of Shadow Valley would not permit his
gift to be seen in anything less than its full magnificence, and had
commanded that no man in the world might enter to see the work of his
bowmen and craftsmen until it should frown at all comers a castle
formidable as any in Spain.

And then they heaped up the mortar and rock to the top of the second
storey, but above that they let the timbers show, except where they
filled in plaster between the curving trunks: and the ages blackened
the timber in amongst the white plaster; but not a storm that blew in
all the years that came, nor the moss of so many Springs, ever rotted
away those beams that the forest had given and on which the bowmen had
laboured so long ago. But the castle weathered the ages and reached our
days, worn, battered even, by its journey through the long and
sometimes troubled years, but splendid with the traffic that it had
with history in many gorgeous periods. Here Valdar the Excellent came
once in his youth. And Charles the Magnificent stayed a night in this
castle when on a pilgrimage to a holy place of the South.

It was here that Peter the Arrogant in his cups gave Africa, one Spring
night, to his sister's son. What grandeurs this castle has seen! What
chronicles could be writ of it! But not these chronicles, for they draw
near their close, and they have yet to tell how the castle was buil