As has already been told, the ruins of the ancient feudal manor of Plouernel rose on the crest of an abruptly rising ridge that once was wholly stripped of vegetation, but that was since planted with trees, seeing it was one of the views from the new castle, the park of which it bounded from the north. The antique dungeon, like all fortified seigniorial castles of the middle ages, had a secret and subterranean issue which opened at a considerable distance from the manor itself. Thanks to this issue, the seigneur, who was always involved in feuds with his neighbors, could flee and elude his enemies if he found his lair on the point of being forced. The subterranean passage of the dungeon of Plouernel which was cut through the living stone by the labor of serfs, communicated, at its near end, with the floors that were constructed below the level of the ground, where were located the prison cells, the torture rooms, and the oubliettes of the manor, and, at the further end, with a precipitous slope at the foot of the mountain, at the top of which rose the dungeon itself. This outer issue opened just outside of but close to the park. One of the numerous gates of the park, the one nearest to the modern castle, opened on the outside upon an avenue, cut through the forest that belonged to the domain of the Count of Plouernel. To the right of the avenue, which ran into the highroad to Rennes, extended a thick wood of old trees, and about two hundred paces from the edge of the same, where the wood grew thickest, was the location of the outer issue of the underground passage from the dungeon. This issue, obstructed in the course of many centuries by underbrush and the slow rise of the soil, bore marks of having recently been cleared, although a curtain of ivy and wild trailing vines, that fell over a natural platform formed by a rocky projection upon which the tangled vegetation had taken root, was left to mask the entrance. Thanks to his family archives, Salaun Lebrenn was aware of this entrance to the dungeon, and he and his son having put themselves in touch with some of the Count's vassals--resolute men and leaders in the projected uprising--he had acquainted them with the secret passage that communicated with the open country, and which offered a safe place for the deposit of arms and munitions of war. The mouth of the passage, partially masked by the vines, lay about twenty paces from a clump of old trees that surrounded a little clearing carpeted with grass. In the middle of the clearing rose an enormous oak, so old, so very old, that, _crowned_ with age, as foresters say, its sap had dried out, and not a leaf greened its immense spread of branches. A living spring furnished a natural reservoir at the extremity of the clearing. A narrow path, worn across the copse of the wood by the hoofs of the does and stags who came during the night to drink at the spring, ran out into the road.