Thus saying, he caught the lamp from the table with one hand, and grasping Ida’s arm with the other, he drew her from the chamber.—Bewildered, terrified, she had not presence of mind sufficient to form a resolution; and her exhausted frame was unable to resist the force, with which he urged her forwards, as she followed him through the long galleries, rather passively submitting, than wilfully consenting to his design. I formerly mentioned, that Count Frederick still resided on the spot, which had once been the habitation of the antient Counts of Carlsheim and Sargans. To this he had chiefly been induced by the beauty of the situation: perhaps too his pride was secretly gratified by the recollection, that his residence was the same with that, whence his ancestors were accustomed to extend the sceptre of command over the surrounding provinces, and to set at defiance the resentment of many a sovereign prince, who possest much more lofty-sounding titles but much less real power and strength.—Still the gloomy, half-ruined Castle of Sargans was by no means a mansion suited to the taste of its modern possessor. Accordingly he had levelled to the ground the remains of a wing of this gigantic pile, which had formerly been destroyed by fire, and had erected in its place a stately palace, at once noble in its external form, and convenient in its interior accommodations. This was called the Castle of Torrenburg; while the forsaken halls and towers of Sargans were still distinguished by the name of the “Donat-Fortress,” the two buildings were separated by courts of considerable extent; the antient one was in a great measure suffered to go to ruin, except a few apartments which were kept up for the accommodation of domestics, when on solemn occasions the number of guests was too great to be received within the walls of the Count’s own residence. Superstition had not failed to extend her dominion over the Donat-Fortress.—Traditions respecting the former Counts of Carlsheim and Sargans, which had been handed down from father to son, and with which you, Elizabeth, are already well acquainted, furnished subjects sufficient for a thousand wonderful stories. In truth, the prejudice, in favour of the opinion that the ruins were haunted, was so prevalent, that not merely among the Count’s domestics, but even among the inhabitants of the neighbouring villages numbers of ghost-seers were to be found, who had beheld at sundry times (and with their own eyes) the spirits of Ethelbert and Urania, of Donat, Helen, and other traditionary personages, wandering among those abandoned halls and moss-grown towers; and they augured either favourable or inauspicious events to the reigning possessor, according as the vision represented a lady or a Monk, an innocent wife or her haughty tyrant husband.