There was a woman in it of about the middle age, kneeling by the bedside of a youth who seemed just dead; and on looking down a little below he saw a man, dressed in a black serge robe, standing on a ladder, and marking the front of the building with a large white cross. On the impulse of the moment, Charles of Montsoreau ran down stairs, and approached the door of the house, intending to enter. But he was stopped at the door by two of the guards of the city. "Do you not see the mark of the plague?" they said. "You must not go in; or, if you go in, you must not come out again." With a sorrowful heart, Charles of Montsoreau turned back into the inn, but he found no sleep, and the image of the woman clasping her dead son still haunted him in waking visions. CHAP. VII. It was about nine o'clock at night, and the moon, rising later than the night before, had not yet gone down, as Charles of Montsoreau passed through the wide forest that then surrounded Chateauneuf en Thimerais. It was a beautiful moonlight scene, affording to the eye many various and pleasant objects. The greater part of the forest, indeed, consisted of old trees far apart from each other, and only surrounded by brushwood in patches here and there. Occasionally, indeed, deeper and thicker parts of the forest presented themselves, where the axe had not been plied so unsparingly; but the ground was hilly and broken, and the road ascended and descended continually, showing every change of the forest ground. There were manifold streams too in that part of the country, and small gushing fountains, while a chapel or two, here and there raised by the pious inhabitants of the neighbourhood, broke the desolate appearance of the wood by showing sweet traces of human hope or gratitude. The heart, however, of Charles of Montsoreau enjoyed not that scene as it might at any other time, for many dark and painful reports had reached him of the state of the country in that district, and he looked anxiously forward to his arrival at the little village of Morvillette seated in the midst of the forest, to hear further tidings of Chateauneuf and its neighbourhood. A party of soldiers he had already heard had passed along some days before, escorting a carriage, and it was understood their destination was Chateauneuf; but the people of Tremblay, where he received this intelligence, shook the head doubtingly, and added, that the traveller would hear more at Morvillette, and could there get a guide to the château, which was two miles from the town.