For the rest I rode with little attention or regard for the provinces through which we passed. The very cities wherein we slept seemed the cities of a dream, so that now I am like one who strives to piece together memories of a journey taken in early childhood. An alley of trees recurs to me, the shine of stars in a midnight sky, or, again, the comfortable figure of a Boniface; but the images are confused and void of suggestion, for I rode eyes shut and hands clenched, as a coward rides in the press of battle. At times, indeed, when we halted, I would turn industriously to my Horace. The book had fallen open at the Palinodia when I dropped it in the prison, so that Julian's sketch was on the page opposite to the date September 14. I append here the diagram which was to enable me to find an entrance into the Castle, and it will be seen that I had much excuse for studying it. In truth, I could make neither head nor tail of its signification. [Illustration: Outline of Lukstein Castle] 'Twas ever this outline of Lukstein Castle that I pondered, though Jack knew it not, and when he beheld the book in my hands would gaze at me with a troubled look of distrust. On the instant I would fall miserably to taking count of myself. "Here are you," I would object to myself, "a bookish student of a mean stature and a dilatory mind. You have faced no weapon more deadly than a buttoned foil, and you would compel a man of great strength and indubitable cunning to a mortal encounter in the privacy of his own house, that is, supposing you are not previously done to death by his serfs, which is most like to happen." Then would my courage, a very ricketty bantling, make weak protest: "You faced a blunderbuss and a volley of slugs, and you were not afraid." "But," I would answer hotly, "you did not face them, you were running away. Besides, you had called your assailant a potatoe, and therefore had already a contempt for him. This time it is you who will be the potatoe, as you will most surely discover when Count Lukstein spits you on his skewer;" and so I would get me wretchedly to bed. There were, indeed, but two thoughts which served to console me. In the first place, I was sensible that I had acquired some dexterity with the foils, and if I could but imagine a button on the point of the Count's sword I might hope to hold my own. In the second, I remembered very clearly a remark of Julian's. "The man's a coward," he had said, and I hugged the sentence to my breast. I repeated the words, indeed, until they fell into the cadence of a rhythm and lost all meaning and comfort for me, sounding hollow, like the tapping of an empty nut.