swallowed up and carried away by the wind. The
night fell swiftly; the flag of England, fluttering on the spire-top,
grew ever fainter and fainter against the flying clouds--a black speck
like a swallow in the tumultuous, leaden chaos of the sky. As the night
fell the wind rose, and began to hoot under archways and roar amid the
tree-tops in the valley below the town.

Denis de Beaulieu walked fast, and was soon knocking at his friend's
door; but though he promised himself to stay only a little while and
make an early return, his welcome was so pleasant, and he found so much
to delay him, that it was already long past midnight before he said
good-bye upon the threshold. The wind had fallen again in the meanwhile;
the night was as black as the grave; not a star, nor a glimmer of
moonshine, slipped through the canopy of cloud. Denis was ill-acquainted
with the intricate lanes of Chateau Landon; even by daylight he had
found some trouble in picking his way; and in this absolute darkness he
soon lost it altogether. He was certain of one thing only--to keep
mounting the hill; for his friend's house lay at the lower end, or tail,
of Chateau Landon, while the inn was up at the head, under the great
church spire. With this clue to go upon he stumbled and groped forward,
now breathing more freely in open places where there was a good slice of
sky overhead, now feeling along the wall in stifling closes. It is an
eerie and mysterious position to be thus submerged in opaque blackness
in an almost unknown town. The silence is terrifying in its
possibilities. The touch of cold window-bars to the exploring hand
startles the man like the touch of a toad; the inequalities of the
pavement shake his heart into his mouth; a piece of denser darkness
threatens an ambuscade or a chasm in the pathway; and where the air is
brighter, the houses put on strange and bewildering appearances, as if
to lead him farther from his way. For Denis, who had to regain his inn
without attracting notice, there was real danger as well as mere
discomfort in the walk; and he went warily and boldly at once, and at
every corner paused to make an observation.

He had been for some time threading a lane so narrow that he could touch
a wall with either hand, when it began to open out and go sharply
downward. Plainly this lay no longer in the direction of his inn; but
the hope of a little more light tempted him forward to reconnoitre. The
lane ended in a terrace with