They passed dark cottages, and finally reached the fateful angle of the road. Rusty groaned apprehensively. "Say, Marse Warren, I wouldn't mind dis all in de meanest moonshine district in Kaintuck, but I don't like for to ride in dis yere foreign district. W'y didn't you-all pick out some place w'ere dey speaks human talk, instead of dis on-Christian lingo? It don't seem releegious to me, Marse Warren." "Rusty, I'm beginning to think you've got a yellow streak in you, with all this talk about objections. You used to have a name for not even being afraid of your weight in wildcats," said Warren. Rusty nodded, as he clung tightly to the saddle, on the increasingly rough trail. "Marse Warren, dat was right. But wildcats is purty heavy, an' you-all can hit 'em with a shotgun. De trouble wid ghosts is dat dey don't weigh nuffin!" "Lookout, Rusty. Here's a brook," and suddenly Jarvis' horse stumbled to its feet, after sliding down a sharp declivity which had been hidden by the shadows of the big moonlit trees. Rusty was not so fortunate,--he was rolled off despite his efforts, to receive a ducking. Then did his teeth have reason to chatter, as he mounted again to follow his master up the declivity with dripping clothes. "Whaffor dey want a crick like dat just below de doors of a castle, Marse Warren?" he complained. "That's how they got their water supply--I wouldn't be surprised if the old place weren't built right on top of that spring. You know when this place was built they didn't have any faucets or taps in these old places.--Except on the heads!" They mounted higher, ever higher, swinging on their saddlebows the unlighted, antique lanterns. Rusty was unmistakably becoming more and more nervous. The road took a sharp turn to the right now, and they clattered over the wooden bridge of the moat. They faced the great doorway of the old castle now. In the moonlight it was an eerie sight indeed. The castle stood on a broad rocky shelf. A cold wind swept over the mountain top, rattling the naked branches near by the dismal walls. "Ooooh!" "What's that?" grunted Rusty in terror. "Just the wind trying to get out through those barred windows up there, you fool." "Laws-a-massy, I don't blame it fer gittin' out. I wish I wasn't goin' in." A lone cloud took this occasion to cover the moon, and the shadow darkened the outlines of the sinister structure. The castle, so Warren had judged on his trip up the hill, must have been built in the period of the Spanish Moors. Later, perhaps when the Moors had been driven out of the country, two dismal wings, several towers and turrets had been added, reminding one of the castles on the Rhine cliffs. The face of the structure, which Jarvis scanned quickly, was about two hundred feet long and maybe sixty feet high--with two stanch square towers at either end.