Before very long I had secured a room, and it seemed that the people were accustomed to travellers, for it was surprisingly clean.

The bed was so high that I could touch the ceiling when I sat on it, and the walls were covered with ornaments, such as glazed earthenware saints, each with a little basin for holy water, some old engravings of other saints, a few paper roses from the last fair, and a weather-beaten game-pouch of leather.

The window looked out over a kind of square, where a great quantity of water ran into a row of masonry tanks out of a number of iron pipes projecting from an overhanging rock.

Above the rock was the castle, the place I had come to see, towering up against the darkening sky.
It is such a strange place that I ought to describe it to you, or you will not understand the things that happened there.

There is a great rock, as I said, rising above the town, and upon this is built the feudal stronghold, so that the walls of the building do not begin less than forty feet from the street level.