At last we were coming to the hilltop and the chateau. Rather
breathless, I studied its looming walls, its turrets, its three round
towers. It looked dark and inexplicably menacing, but I had recovered my
form and could defy it. When we halted at a great iron-studded oak gate
and Miss Falconer pulled the bell-rope, I was astonished. It had not
occurred to me that the castle would be more inhabited than the town.
Nor was it, apparently; for no one answered its summons, though I could
hear the bell jingling faintly somewhere within. Miss Falconer rang a
second time, then a third; her face shone white in the moonlight; she
was growing anxious.
"Did you think," I ventured finally, "that there was some one here?"
"Yes; Marie-Jeanne," she answered, listening intently. Then she roused
herself. "I mean the _gardienne_. She never left, not even when the
Germans came. They made her cook for them; she said she had been born in
the keeper's lodge, and her grandfather before her, and that she would
rather die at Prezelay than go to any other place. But of course she
may have walked down the river for the evening.
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