Page:C N and A M Williamson - The Lightning Conductor.djvu/115

 ask an astonished question; then I thought better of it and kept still, though I know my eyes must have been snapping when Brown actually drove the car in. The gateway clanged behind us, as if by enchantment, shutting us into a twilight region, and behold, we were mounting the incline of the great tower, up which, perhaps, nobody had ever driven since the days of Mary Stuart.

Wasn't it kind of Brown to remember my wish (which even I had forgotten!) to drive up the tower? I could hardly thank him enough for such a new and thrilling sensation as it was, twisting up and up, seeming to float in the vast hollow of the passage, the exquisite carved and vaulted roof giving back a rythmical reverberation of the throbbing of our motor.

I couldn't even say "thank you," though, except in my thoughts, till we got to the top (which we did much too soon), for somehow it would have broken the charm to speak. But I think Brown understood that I appreciated it all, and what he had done.

At the top a big doorway stood open, and by it one of the delightful, grizzled, dignified old dears who must have been made guardians of the Château, because they fit so well into the picture. I thought, though, that this one looked different from before, for some reason quite flurried and almost scared. I suppose it must have been the car and the unusualness that upset him; but Brown drove out splendidly, stopping in the terrace-garden.

"At that door," said the charming old fellow, "Francis the First of France received Henry the