turned back, and twice
adventured again, till he got so deep into the forest that it seemed as
far to return as to advance. How he started at the sudden bellow of two
stags, and the clatter of their horns as they fought in the brake close
by, and how beautiful the castle looked when presently he emerged from
the bushes and looked down upon it!

This was the very room he slept in; the Baroness, mother-like, came to
see that he was comfortable. Here he had slept every time since; here he
had listened in the early morning for Aurora's footfall as she passed
his door, for the ladies rose earlier than did the men. He now sat down
by the open window; it was a brilliant moonlight night, warm and
delicious, and the long-drawn note of the nightingale came across the
gardens from the hawthorn bushes without the inner stockade. To the left
he could see the line of the hills, to the right the forest; all was
quiet there, but every now and then the sound of a ballad came round the
castle, a sound without recognizable words, inarticulate merriment.

If he started upon the hazardous voyage he contemplated, and for which
he had been so long preparing, should he ever sleep there again, so near
the one he loved? Was it not better to be poor and despised, but near
her, than to attempt such an expedition, especially as the chances (as
his common sense told him) were all against him? Yet he could not stay;
he _must_ do it, and he tried to stifle the doubt which insisted upon
arising in his mind. Then he recurred to Durand; he remembered that not
once on that day had he exchanged one single word, beyond the first and
ordinary salutation, with Aurora.

Might she not, had she chosen, have arranged a moment's interview? Might
she not easily have given him an opportunity? Was it not clear that she
was ashamed of her girlish fancy for a portionless and despised youth?
If so, was it worth while to go upon so strange an enterprise for her
sake? But if so, also, was life worth living, and might he not as well
go and seek destruction?

While this conflict of feeling was proceeding, he chanced to look
towards the table upon which he had carelessly placed his lamp, and
observed, what in his agitated state of mind he had previously
overlooked, a small roll of manuscript tied round with silk. Curious in
books, he undid the fastening, and opened the volume. There was not much
writing, but many singular diagrams, and signs arranged in circles. It
was,