So saying, he followed the man to whom Bourbonne had spoken. Another soldier took a lantern from a hook and came after; and in a minute or two Edward found himself pushed into a room where the faint light of the lantern only served to show the shining damp which clung to the stone walls. [Footnote 5: These two men, who adhered to Lord Montagu through his whole journey, first tracking him from place to place with the sagacity and pertinacity of well-trained hounds, and then contriving to get admitted to his service, were in reality Basques. Some have supposed that they were creatures of Monsieur de Bourbonne; but there seems no doubt they were two of the many skilful agents whom Richelieu took care to provide himself with in every rank of life.] CHAPTER XXXIV. A dungeon is by no means an agreeable place; and the dungeon of poor Edward Langdale was not an agreeable dungeon. As was common at that time, before Vauban and others had introduced a better system of fortification, the principal defence of the Castle of Coiffy was a wet ditch or fosse, which differed little from those we see surrounding old castles of the feudal period. This wet ditch was supplied with abundance of water from a spring a little higher up the hill, which, indeed, was the source of one of the principal confluents of the Aube; but the soil, as I have said elsewhere, being somewhat sandy, the banks suffered the water to percolate, somewhat to the detriment of the foundations of the castle; and, had not the masonry been very heavy and the mortar somewhat better than we use in building cockney villas, the square flanking-tower to the right of the gateway as you look east would have been down fifty years before and crushed to death the denizens of poor Edward's dungeon,--if it had been furnished with tenants at that time.