How often, on my way to school, have I stopped beneath the tree to collect the fallen acorns; how often run down to the stream to pluck a branch of the hawthorn which hung over the water! The road which passed the castle joined, beyond these fields, the path which traversed them.

It took, I well remember, a certain solemn and mysterious interest from the ruin.
The shadow of the archway, the discolorizations of time on all the walls, the dimness of the little thicket which encircled it, the traditions of its immeasurable age, made St.Quentin's Castle a wonderful and awful fabric in the imagination of a child; and long after I last saw its mouldering roughness, I never read of fortresses, or heights, or spectres, or banditti, without connecting them with the one ruin of my childhood.
"It was close to this spot that one of the few adventures occurred which marked, in my mind, my boyish days with importance.

When loitering beyond the castle, on the way to school, with a brother somewhat older than myself, who was uniformly my champion and protector, we espied a round sloe high up in the hedge-row.

We determined to obtain it; and I do not remember whether both of us, or only my brother, climbed the tree.

However, when the prize was all but reached,--and no alchemist ever looked more eagerly for the moment of projection which was to give him immortality and omnipotence,--a gruff voice startled us with an oath, and an order to desist; and I well recollect looking back, for long after, with terror to the vision of an old and ill-tempered farmer, armed with a bill-hook, and vowing our decapitation; nor did I subsequently remember without triumph the eloquence whereby alone, in my firm belief, my brother and myself had been rescued from instant death.
"At the entrance of the little town stood an old gateway, with a pointed arch and decaying battlements.