Some market folks were chanting in _patois_, and their
light-heartedness enraged him. He turned up a crooked street, and
stopped before an ancient church, grotesque with broken buttresses,
pinnacles, and gargoyles. The portal was wide open, and, as he entered,
some scores of school-children burst suddenly into song. It seemed to
him an accusation, shouted by a choir of angels.
At the end of the city, facing the sea, rose a massive castle. He scaled
its stairs, and passed through the courtyard, and, crossing the farther
moat, stood upon a grassy hill--once an outwork--whence the blue channel
was visible half way to England.
A knot of soldiers came out to regard him, and his fears magnified their
curiosity; he ran down the parapet, to their surprise, and re-entered
the town by a roundabout way. "I will take a chamber," he said, "and
shun observation."
An old woman, in a starched cap, who talked incessantly, showed him a
number of rooms in a great stone building. He chose a garret among the
chimney-stacks, and lit a fire, and ordered a newspaper and a bottle of
brandy. He sat down to read in loneliness. As he surmised, the murder
was printed among the "_Faits Divers_;" it gave his name and the story
of the tragedy. His chair rattled upon the tiles as he read, and the
tongs, wherewith he touched the fire, clattered in his nervous fingers.
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