We must now conduct the reader at once to the entrance of the castle of Masseran. The gate itself was shut, though the drawbridge was down and the portcullis was up. There was a little wicket, indeed, left ajar, showing the long, dark perspective of the heavy archway under the gate tower, gloomy and prison-like, and the large square court beyond, with its white stones glistening in the sun; while the gray walls of the castle and part of a window, as well as the door of the keep, appeared at the opposite side. On either side, under the archway, but scarcely to be seen in its gloomy shadow, was a long bench, and on the left hand a low door leading up to the apartments in the gate tower. The right-hand bench was occupied by one of the soldiers of the place, and at the door was the warder's wife talking to him, while our friend, the jovial priest, who had escaped without harm or hinderance, notwithstanding the threats of the Count de Meyrand, was waiting at the wicket, from time to time looking through into the court, and from time to time turning round and gazing upon the mountains, humming an air which was certainly not a canticle. After a pause of some ten or fifteen minutes, the warder himself appeared, a heavy man, past the middle age, and dressed in rusty gray. "He won't see you, Father Willand," he said. "He's walking in the inner court, and in a dangerous sort of mood. I would rather not be the man to cross him now." "Poh! nonsense," replied Father Willand, laughing. "Go in again to him, good warder: tell him I have business of importance with him, and I know that this refusal is only one of his sweet jokes. He will see me, soft-hearted gentleman! Go and tell him--go and tell him, warder!" "Faith, not I," replied the warder. "That business of last night seems to have galled him sorely, and he is just in the humour to fire a man out of a culverin, as we know his father once did; but in these days it won't do: culverins make too loud a report, you know. I will not go near him again." "Then I will go myself," replied the priest. "He won't hurt me. Nay, warder, you would not squeeze the Church in the wicket gateway! By Heaven--or, as I should say less profanely, by the blessed rood--if you pinch my stomach one moment more you will pinch forth an anathema, which will leave you but a poor creature all your life." "Well, be it on your head," cried the warder, with a grim smile; "though a two-inch cudgel or a fall from the battlements is the best thing to be hoped for you."