THE WHODUNIT COLLECTION: British Murder Mysteries (15 Novels in One Volume). Charles Norris Williamson

out of the moon for her, if she had asked me, I was so delighted. And part of my joy was mixed up with the thought that he wanted me to be with him. He had actually schemed to get me! I envied no one in the world, not even the lovely lady of the battlement garden. He was mine for to-day, in spite of her—so there!

      Sir Samuel got into the boat, and wrapped his wife in rugs. The boatmen pushed off. Away the flat-bottomed punt slid down the clear green stream, the sun shining, the cascades sparkling, the strange precipices which wall the gorge, copper-tinted in the morning light. It was the most wonderful world; yet Lady Turnour was cackling angrily. Was she afraid? Had she changed her mind? No, the saints be praised! She was only burning holes in her petticoat on the brazier supplied by the hotel! I turned away to hide a smile almost as wicked as a grin, and before I looked round again, the swift stream had swept the boat out of sight round a jutting corner of rock. We were safe. This time it really was our world, our car, and our everything. We didn't even need to "pretend."

      Ste. Enemie is only at the gates of the gorge—a porter's lodge, so to speak, and in the Aigle we sped on into the fairyland of which we'd had our first pale, moonlit peep last night. There were castles made by man, and castles made by gnomes; but the gnomes were the better architects. Their dwellings, carved of rock, towered out of the river to a giddy height, and some were broken in half, as if they had been rent asunder by gnome cannon, in gnome battles. There were gnome villages, too, which looked exactly like human habitations, with clustering roofs plastered against the mountain-side. But the hand of man had not placed one of these stones upon another.

      There were gigantic rock statues, and watch-towers for gnomes to warn old-time gnome populations, perhaps, when their enemies, the cave-dwellers, were coming that way from a mammoth-hunt; and there was a wonderful grotto, fitted with doors and windows, a grotto whose occupants must surely have inherited the mansion from their ancestors, the cave-dwellers. Every step of the way History, gaunt and war-stained, stalked beside us, followed hot-foot by his foster-mother, Legend; and the first stories of the one and the last stories of the other were tangled inextricably together.

      Legend and history were alike in one regard; both told of brave men and beautiful women; and the people we met as we drove, looked worthy of their forebears who had fought and suffered for religion and independence, in this strange, rock-walled corridor, shared with fairies and gnomes. The men were tall, with great bold, good-natured eyes and apple-red cheeks, to which their indigo blouses gave full value. The women were of gentle mien, with soft glances; and the children were even more attractive than their elders. Tiny girls, like walking dolls, with dresses to the ground, bobbed us curtseys; and sturdy little boys, curled up beside ancient grandfathers, in carts with old boots protecting the brakes, saluted like miniature soldiers, or pulled off their quaint round caps, as they stared in big-eyed wonder at our grand, blue car. For them we were prince and princess, not chauffeur and maid.

      Sometimes our road through the gorge climbed high above the rushing green river, and ran along a narrow shelf overhanging the ravine, but clear of snow and ice; sometimes it plunged down the mountain-side as if on purpose to let us hear the music of the water; and one of these sudden swoops downward brought us in sight of a château so enchanting and so evidently enchanted, that I was sure a fairy's wand had waved for its creation, perhaps only a moment before. When we were gone, it would disappear again, and the fairy would flash down under the translucent water, laughing, as she sent up a spray of emeralds and pearls.

      "Of course, it isn't real!" I exclaimed. "But do let's stop, because such a knightly castle wouldn't be rude enough to vanish right before our eyes."

      "No, it won't vanish, because it's a most courteous little castle, which has been well brought up, and even though its greatness is gone, tries to live up to its traditions," said Jack. "It always appears to everyone it thinks likely to appreciate it; and I was certain it would be here in its place to welcome you."

      We smiled into each other's eyes, and I felt as if the castle were a present from him to me. How I should have loved to have it for mine, to make up for one poor old château, now crumbled hopelessly into ruin, and despised by the least exacting of tourists! Coming upon it unexpectedly in this green dell, at the foot of the precipice, seeing it rise from the water on one side, reflected as in a broken mirror, and draped in young, golden foliage on the other, it really was an ideal castle for a fairy tale. A connoisseur in the best architecture of the Renaissance would perhaps have been ungracious enough to pick faults; for to a critical eye the turrets and arches might fall short of perfection; and there was little decoration on the time-darkened stone walls, save the thick curtain of old, old ivy; but the fairy grace of the towers rising from the moat of glittering, bright green water was gay and sweet as a song heard in the woods.

      "Some beautiful nymph ought to have lived here," I said dreamily, when we had got out of the car. "A nymph whose beauty was celebrated all over the world, so that knights from far and near came to this lovely place to woo her."

      "Why, you might have heard the story of the place!" said Jack. "It's the Château de la Caze, usually called the Castle of the Nymphs, for instead of one, eight beautiful nymphs lived in it. But their beauty was their undoing. I don't quite know why they were called 'nymphs,' for nymphs and naiads had gone out of fashion when they reigned here as Queens of Beauty, in the sixteenth century. But perhaps in those days to call a girl a 'nymph' was to pay her a compliment. It wouldn't be now, when chaps criticize the 'nymphery' if they go to a dance! Anyhow, these eight sisters, were renowned for their loveliness, and all the unmarried gentlemen of France—according to the story—as well as foreign knights, came to pay court to them. The unfortunate thing was, when the cavaliers saw the eight girls together, they were all so frightfully pretty it wasn't possible to choose between them, so the poor gentlemen fought over their rival charms, and were either killed or went away unable to make up their minds. The sad end was, if you'll believe me, that all the eight maidens died unmarried, martyrs to their own incomparable charms."

      "I can quite believe it," I answered, "and it wasn't at all sad, because I'm sure any girl who had once had this place for her home would have pined in grief at being taken away, even by the most glorious knight of the world."

      "Come in and see their boudoir," said the knight who worked, if he did not fight, for me.

      So we went in, without the trouble of using battering rams; for alas, the family of the eight nymphs grew tired of their château and the gorge in the dreadful days of the religious wars, and now it is an hotel. It would not receive paying guests until summer, but a good-natured caretaker opened the door for us, and we saw a number of stone-paved corridors, and the nymphs' boudoir.

      Their adoring father had ordered their portraits to be painted on the ceiling; and there they remain to this day, simpering sweetly down upon the few bits of ancient furniture made to match the room and suit their taste.

      They smiled amiably at us, too, the eight little faces framed in Henrietta Maria curls; and their eyes said to me, "If you want to be happy, m'amie, it is better not to be too beautiful; or else not to have any sisters. Or if Providence will send you sisters, go away yourself, and visit your plainest friend, till you have got a husband."

      Gazing wistfully back, as one does gaze at places one fears never to see again, the Castle of the Nymphs looked like a fantastic water-flower standing up out of the green river, on its thick stem of rock. Then it was gone; for our time was not quite our own, and we dared not linger, lest the boat with our Betters should arrive at the meeting place before we reached it in the car. But there were compensations, for almost with every moment the gorge grew grander. Cascades sparkled in the sun like blowing diamond-dust. The rocks seemed set with jewels, or patterned with mosaic; and there were caves—caves almost too good to be true. Yet if we could believe our eyes, they were true, even the dark cavern where, once upon a time, lived a scaly dragon who terrorized the whole country for miles around, and had no relish for his meals unless they were composed of the most exquisite young maidens—though he would accept a child as an hors d'oeuvre. In such a strange world as this, after all, it was no harder to believe in dragons, than in hiding countesses, fed and tended for months upon months by faithful servants, while the red Revolution raged; yet the countess and her cave were vouched for by history, which ignored the dragon