There was nothing to be done but to slink round in the shadow of the park wall to the little secret garden door which once had been contrived for him by Uncle Kutowski, so that his excursions by night should not come to his father's ears. Of course it was an understood thing that in so zealously rendering this service. Uncle Kutowski also acted in his own interest, for he too had had good reasons for keeping his nocturnal adventures private and unbeknown to the master of the house. Leo paced slowly along the dry moat which skirted the park, and over which the hundred-year-old limes of Halewitz cast the shade of their dark masses of foliage, till he came to the spot which he supposed was only known to himself and to his uncle. But, to his vexation and amazement, he saw that the little door was standing wide open, and, worse still, the wilderness of brambles and gooseberry bushes which, on the inner side, had almost buried the approach to the exit, had been uprooted and levelled and replaced by a convenient gravel path that seemed to invite alluringly any evil-disposed person to the privy door. "Thus do our old vices punish us," thought Leo; and he recalled with a stab at his heart the period of his life when at this door, night after night, there stood ready for him a saddled horse, which Uncle Kutowski had procured for him, and which towards morning would be driven out to grass, sweating and covered with foam. "Wait a bit, you scoundrels," he muttered betwixt his teeth; "I'll show you which is the right path." There were still lights illuminating the windows of the castle that faced the flower-parterre. A broad stone terrace ran nearly the whole length of the rambling building, and old vines which never bore fruit draped the balustrade. In the middle of the terrace a flight of dilapidated steps, flanked by two pock-marked nymphs in sandstone, led down to the garden. The glass doors of the garden salon were open, and the hanging lamp with its three sconces lighted the table, from which supper had been cleared away, and sent a warm red glow across the terrace as far as the venerable heads of the nymphs, whose fragile profiles it touched with gold. Leo walked as softly as the crunching gravel and his own vigorous footsteps would allow, towards the light. He avoided the wooden kiosque, the white plaster pillars of which, seen from the opposite side, gave a finish to the perspective of the landscape, and rounding the fish-pond, from whose slimy depths rose a soft gurgling, he banged his head against the obelisk. It was a stupid erection of brickwork and mortar, with a bronze tablet let into the middle, recording for posterity the heroic deeds of Standard-bearer Fritz von Sellenthin at the battle of Hohenfriedberg. "A pity the storms have not demolished this bric-a-brac," thought Leo, as he rubbed the lump on his forehead with a pained smile.