But hardly were the rejoicings over the kingly visit ended, and the last guests departed, than there came a time now only spoken of in hushed whispers by the villagers. They told tales of shriekings and wailings heard night after night within the castle, of a lady who walked evening after evening through the dusky avenue which led to the entrance-gates of the castle on the farther side of the hill, weeping and wringing her hands, and hardly had the mysterious sounds been for a few days hushed, than the bell had tolled out from the little church on the hill, and the country-folk around said to one another, with pale faces, that they had expected that sound, for that, for generations past, shrieks and wailings from the castle had always been the warning of the approaching death of its lord. There was a stately funeral, and the young earl, only surviving child of the Bryn Afons, stood at the grave, with his handsome boyish face bowed upon his hands, and the bystanders shook their heads and whispered to one another, that for all his strength and beauty, the curse of the castle must fall upon him, and that he too would be laid in his grave ere he was fifty years old. There had never been any one to explain the mystery, for no doctor or clergyman from the neighbourhood was ever called in to minister bodily or spiritual comfort to the dying Bryn Afons, and the servants had for many years past been foreigners, unable to breathe, if they would, a word in explanation of the strange family history of their masters. It was said that the young earl had declared he would never visit the castle again after his father's death, and that he had gone abroad with his mother directly after the funeral. Certain it was that no one in the neighbourhood had seen or heard of him since. His mother's remains had been laid in the family grave a year after those of her husband, but the funeral had taken place quite suddenly, and with no stately ceremonies, so that most of the villagers had not even heard of her death till all was over, and whether her son had returned to his own country or not, or whether or no he had since wooed and won a fair bride, none could say. It was a saying in the valley that the Bryn Afons only came to the castle to die, and the fine old building was already half in ruins from neglect during the past two or three hundred years.