CHAPTER XI.
THE EARL.
He met no one on his way from the gate up through the wood.

He ascended the hill with its dark ascending firs, to its crown of silvery birches, above which, as often as the slowly circling road brought him to the other side, he saw rise like a helmet the gray mass of the fortress.

Turret and tower, pinnacle and battlement, appeared and disappeared as he climbed.

Not until at last he stood almost on the top, and from an open space beheld nearly the whole front, could he tell what it was like.

It was a grand pile, but looked a gloomy one to live in.
He stood on a broad grassy platform, from which rose a gravelled terrace, and from the terrace the castle.