As he read, the hopes which De Blenau had conceived from the comforts that were allowed him fled in air. There also, in the same apartment, and doubtless attended with the same care, had the wretched Caply lingered away the last hours of an existence about to be terminated by a dreadful and agonizing death. "And such may be my fate," thought De Blenau with an involuntary shudder, springing from that antipathy which all things living bear to death. But the moment after, the blood rushed to his cheek, reproaching him for yielding to such a feeling though no one was present to witness its effects. "What!" thought he, "I who have confronted death a thousand times, to tremble at it now! However, let me see the truth of what this paper tells;" and entering the bed-room, he approached the iron door, of which he easily drew back the bolts, Caply having taken care to grease them with oil from the lamp, so that they moved without creating the smallest noise. The moment that these were drawn, the slightest push opened the door, and De Blenau beheld before him a little winding stone staircase, filling the whole of one of the small towers; which containing no chambers and only serving as a back access to the apartments in the square tower, had been suffered in some degree to go to decay. The walls were pierced with loopholes, which being enlarged by some of the stones having fallen away, afforded sufficient aperture for the moonlight to visit the interior with quite enough power to permit of De Blenau's descending without other light. Leaving the lamp, therefore, in the bed-room, he proceeded down the steps till they at once opened from the turret into the inner court, where all was moonlight and silence, it being judged unnecessary, after the prisoners were locked in for the night, to station even a single sentry in a place which was otherwise so well secured. Without venturing out of the shadow of the tower, De Blenau returned to his apartment, feeling a degree of satisfaction in the idea that he should not now be cut off from all communication with those below in case he should desire it. He no longer felt so absolutely lonely as before, when his situation had appeared almost as much insulated as many of those that the lower dungeons of that very building contained, who were condemned to drag out the rest of their years in nearly unbroken solitude. Having replaced the paper in the book, for the benefit of any one who might be confined there in future, De Blenau fastened the iron door on the inside, and addressing his prayers to Heaven, he laid himself down to rest. For some time his thoughts resumed their former train, and continued to wander over his situation and its probable termination, but at length his ideas became confused, memory and perception gradually lost their activity, while fatigue and the remaining weakness from his late wounds overcame him, and he slept. CHAPTER III.