I turned and glanced towards where I had left Alan.  I could see his figure framed in by the window, a black shadow against the gray twilight of the sky behind.  Erect and perfectly motionless he sat, so motionless as to look almost lifeless, gazing before him down the valley into the illimitable distance beyond.  There was something in that stern immobility of look and attitude which struck me with a curious sense of congruity.  It was right that he should be thus—­right that he should be no longer the laughing boy who a moment before had been in my memory.  The haunting horrors of that place seemed to demand it, and for the first time I felt that I understood the change.  With an effort I shook myself free from these fancies, and turned to go.  As I did so, my eye fell upon a queer-shaped painted board, leaning up against the wall, which I well recollected in old times.  Many a discussion had we had about the legend inscribed upon it, which in our wisdom we had finally pronounced to be German, chiefly because it was illegible.  Though I had loudly professed my faith in this theory at the time, I had always had uneasy doubts on the subject, and now half smiling I bent down to verify or remove them.  The language was English, not German; but the badly painted, faded Gothic letters in which it was written made the mistake excusable.  In the dim light I had difficulty even now in deciphering the words, and felt when I had done so that neither the information conveyed nor the style of the composition was sufficient reward for the trouble I had taken.  This is what I read: 

     “Where the woman sinned the maid shall win;
      But God help the maid that sleeps within.”

What the lines could refer to I neither had any notion nor did I pause then even in my own mind to inquire.  I only remember vaguely wondering whether they were intended for a tombstone or for a doorway.  Then, continuing my way, I rapidly descended the steps and remounted my horse, glad to find myself once again in the open air and by my cousin’s side.

The train of thought into which he had sunk during my absence was apparently an absorbing one, for to my first question as to the painted board he could hardly rouse himself to answer.

“A board with a legend written on it?  Yes, he remembered something of the kind there.  It had always been there, he thought.  He knew nothing about it,”—­and so the subject was not continued.

The weird feelings which had haunted me in the tower still oppressed me, and I proceeded to ask Alan about that old Dame Alice whom the traditions of my childhood represented as the last occupant of the ruined building.  Alan roused himself now, but did not seem anxious to impart information on the subject.  She had lived there, he admitted, and no one had lived there since.  “Had she not,” I inquired, “something to do with the mysterious cabinet at the house?  I remember hearing it spoken of as ’Dame Alice’s cabinet.’