"I am afraid of ghosts that wear felt slippers," answered Elettra.
An hour later Veronica sent for Don Teodoro, and they went over the
castle together. He led her first to the high dungeon on the north side.
The natural rock sprang up at that end, and some of the steps were cut
in it. At the top, the tower was round, with a high parapet, and an
extension on one side, all filled with earth and planted with cabbages
and other green things.
"The under-steward had a little vegetable garden here," said Don
Teodoro. "I suppose that you will plant flowers. Will you look over the
parapet on that side?"
Veronica trod the soft earth daintily and reached the wall. She glanced
over it, and then drew a deep breath of surprise. Below her was a sheer
fall of a thousand feet, to the bottom of a desolate ravine that ran up
to northward in an incredibly steep ascent.
Then they went into the ancient prison, which was a round, vaulted
chamber, shaped like the inside of the sharp end of an eggshell, with
one small grated window, three times a man's height from the stone
floor. The little iron door had huge bolts and locks, and might have
been four or five hundred years old. On the stone walls, men who had
been imprisoned there had chipped out little crosses, and made initials,
and rough dates in the fruitless attempts to commemorate their obscure
suffering.
Veronica and Don Teodoro descended again, and he led her through many
strange places, dimly lighted by small windows piercing ten feet of
masonry, and through the enormous hall which had been the guard-room or
barrack in old days, and had served as a granary since then, and up and
down dark stairs, through narrow ways, out upon jutting bastions, down
and up, backwards and forwards, as it seemed to her, till she could only
guess at the direction in which she was going, by the glimpses of
distant mountain and valley as she passed the irregularly placed
windows.
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