When it was over the wine produced its usual exhilarating effect.  Song and romaunt were sung until the shadows began to turn towards the east and the hues of approaching evening to suffuse the shades of the adjacent wilderness.  Then the old servitor came up to Hubert: 

“It is time, my lord, to take the sword thou hast come to seek, and to go, unless thou wishest to be benighted in the forest.”

“My lord,” said Almeric, “we have come abroad in quest of adventures, and as yet found none to relate around the winter fireside when we get home again; and it is the humble petition of your poor squire and men-at-arms that we may remain in the castle this night and see what stuff the phantoms are made of, if phantoms there be.”

Hubert smiled approval.

“My Almeric,” he said, ’I have ever been of opinion that ghostly apparitions are delusions, and always thought that I should like to put the matter to a test.  Wherefore I welcome your proposal with joy, for I doubted whether any of you would willingly stay with me.  We will remain here tonight.”

“Nay,” said the old withered retainer of the house of Fievrault; “bethink thee, my lord, of what befell thy own father.”

“And for that very reason his son would fain avenge him,” said Hubert flippantly, “and flout the ghosts, if such things there be.  And if men—­Frenchmen or the like—­see fit to attire themselves in masquerade, no coward fear will blunt the edge of our swords.”

“Wilful must have his way,” said the old servitor with a sigh.  “What is to be will be, only remember, all of you, the old man has warned you, and only permits you to remain because he has no power to send you forth.”

“Nay, be not so inhospitable.”

“A churl will be a churl,” said Almeric.

The old man shook his head sadly, and went about his business, whatever that may have been.

The party now broke up to examine the castle, and to make sure that all was as it seemed, and that no earthly inmates were there to play pranks in the night.  They ascended the ruined towers, and gazed upon a wilderness of leaves, as far as the eye could reach, save where a wild fantastic range of mountains upreared its riven peaks in the dim distance, the Puy de Dome, the highest point.  Then they descended the steps and explored the vaults and dungeons:  dismal habitations dug by the hands of cruel men in the solid rock upon which the castle was built.  In one they shuddered to behold a human skeleton, from which the rats had long since eaten the flesh, chained by steel manacles around its wrists and ankles to the wall, and hence still retaining its upright position:  and in each of these dark chambers they found sufficient evidence of the fell character of the house of Fievrault.

In one large cell, which had evidently been the torture chamber, they found the rusty implements of cruelty—­curious arrangements of ropes and pulleys; a rack which had fallen to pieces with age; a brazier with rusty pincers, which had once been heated red hot therein, to tear the quivering flesh from some victim, who had long since carried his plaint to the bar of God, where the oppressors had also long since followed him.