“It is a monastery,”—­said a man of whom I asked the way, speaking in a curious kind of guttural patois, half French and half Spanish—­ “No woman goes there.”

I explained that I was entrusted with an important message.

He shook his head.

“Not for any money would I take you,” he declared.  “I should be afraid for myself.”

Nothing could move him from his resolve, so I made up my mind to leave my small luggage at the inn and walk up the steep road which I could see winding like a width of white ribbon towards the goal of my desires.  A group of idle peasants watched me curiously as I spoke to the landlady and asked her to take care of my few belongings till I either sent for them or returned to fetch them, to which arrangement she readily consented.  She was a buxom, pleasant little Frenchwoman, and inclined to be friendly.

“I assure you, Mademoiselle, you will return immediately!” she said, with a bright smile—­“The Chateau d’Aselzion is a place where no woman is ever seen—­and a lady alone!—­ah, mon Dieu!—­impossible!  There are terrible things done there, so they say—­it is a house of mystery!  In the daytime it looks as it does now—­dark, as though it were a prison!—­but sometimes at night one sees it lit up as though it were on fire—­every window full of something that shines like the sun!  It is a Brotherhood that lives there,—­not of the Church—­ah no!  Heaven forbid!—­but they are rich and powerful men—­and it is said they study some strange science—­our traders serve them only at the outer gates and never go beyond.  And in the midnight one hears the organ playing in their chapel, and there is a sound of singing on the very waves of the sea!  I beg of you, Mademoiselle, think well of what you do before you go to such a place!—­for they will send you away—­I am sure they will send you away!”

I smiled and thanked her for her well-meant warning.

“I have a message to give to the Master of the Brotherhood,” I said--"If I am not allowed to deliver it and the gate is shut in my face, I can only come back again.  But I must do my best to gain an entrance if possible.”

And with these words I turned away and commenced my solitary walk.  I had arrived in the early afternoon and the sun was still high in the heavens,—­the heat was intense and the air was absolutely still.  As I climbed higher and higher, the murmuring noises of human life in the little village I had left behind me grew less and less and presently sank altogether out of hearing, and I became gradually aware of the great and solemn solitude that everywhere encompassed me.  No stray sheep browsed on the burnt brown grass of the rocky height I was slowly ascending—­no bird soared through the dazzling deep blue of the vacant sky.  The only sound I could hear was the soft, rhythmic plash of small waves on the beach below, and an indefinite deeper murmur of the sea breaking through a cave in the far distance.  There was