This led to much conversation, and as it was evident that he wanted to talk, if only for talking’s sake, I asked him many questions regarding things that had already happened to me or come within my notice.  Sometimes he sheered off the subject, or turned the conversation by pretending not to understand, but generally he answered all I asked most frankly.  Then as time went on, and I had got somewhat bolder, I asked him of some of the strange things of the preceding night, as for instance, why the coachman went to the places where he had seen the blue flames.  He then explained to me that it was commonly believed that on a certain night of the year, last night, in fact, when all evil spirits are supposed to have unchecked sway, a blue flame is seen over any place where treasure has been concealed.

“That treasure has been hidden,” he went on, “in the region through which you came last night, there can be but little doubt.  For it was the ground fought over for centuries by the Wallachian, the Saxon, and the Turk.  Why, there is hardly a foot of soil in all this region that has not been enriched by the blood of men, patriots or invaders.  In the old days there were stirring times, when the Austrian and the Hungarian came up in hordes, and the patriots went out to meet them, men and women, the aged and the children too, and waited their coming on the rocks above the passes, that they might sweep destruction on them with their artificial avalanches.  When the invader was triumphant he found but little, for whatever there was had been sheltered in the friendly soil.”

“But how,” said I, “can it have remained so long undiscovered, when there is a sure index to it if men will but take the trouble to look?” The Count smiled, and as his lips ran back over his gums, the long, sharp, canine teeth showed out strangely.  He answered: 

“Because your peasant is at heart a coward and a fool!  Those flames only appear on one night, and on that night no man of this land will, if he can help it, stir without his doors.  And, dear sir, even if he did he would not know what to do.  Why, even the peasant that you tell me of who marked the place of the flame would not know where to look in daylight even for his own work.  Even you would not, I dare be sworn, be able to find these places again?”

“There you are right,” I said.  “I know no more than the dead where even to look for them.”  Then we drifted into other matters.

“Come,” he said at last, “tell me of London and of the house which you have procured for me.”  With an apology for my remissness, I went into my own room to get the papers from my bag.  Whilst I was placing them in order I heard a rattling of china and silver in the next room, and as I passed through, noticed that the table had been cleared and the lamp lit, for it was by this time deep into the dark.  The lamps were also lit in the study or library, and I found the Count lying