affairs, only I got so interested in an oubliette, and in a perfectly Titanic round tower, with an inclined plane corkscrewing up, round and round inside it, so broad and so gradual that horses and carriages used in old, old days to be driven from the town-level up to the top. "Only think what fun, Brown," I couldn't help saying, "if we could drive the car up here!" "The idea!" sniffed Aunt Mary. "As if they'd allow such a thing!" But Brown didn't answer; he just looked thoughtfully at the gradient.
We went up, too, on the top of one of the great towers of the castle itself, and it was glorious to stand there looking away over the windings of the river. We were at a bend midway between Blois and Tours, and ever so far off we could see two little horns sticking up over the undulations of the land. They were the towers of the cathedral of Tours; and in that same direction Brown showed me a queer thing like a long, thin finger pointing at the sky—the Lanterne of Rochecorbon. They tised to flash signals from it all the way to Amboise, and so on to Blois, when any horror happened with which they were particularly pleased, like a massacre of Huguenots.
Now, most patient gentleman, at last I've finished my harangue. I'm ashamed to think how long it is, but I'm writing wrapped up in a warm coat, under a tilleul in the Château garden, where I've been allowed to bring my campstool. Do you know what a tilleul is? I don't believe you do. I didn't till the other day; but I shan't tell you, except that the
