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Chap. L.
THE BRICKED-UP LADY.
309
its early red brick! But it stands grand and imposing,
with its three capped towers—mark, there are only
three, for thereby hangs a legend.
It was long long ago—not in the time of the
Revent-lows—though, had its possessor, the brother of the fair
Sophia, treated her in the same way, she would only
have met with her deserts—nor yet in that of the
Rosen-krantz ; all possessors of the place declare it was before
their time—that the daughter of some noble owner of
the domain loved a boy of low degree. Months ran
on—it is an old tale, and one oft told—she bore a child,
and was doomed by her enraged relatives to undergo the
punishment allotted to her crime—to be immured, like
the nuns of old, in a small chamber of the tower, and
there, with the offspring of her love, to pine and die by
a cruel death—starvation.
Years rolled by; the story was well-nigh forgotten,
when one night, during a fearful storm, the lightning
struck the fatal tower, rending it in twain; and there
against the wall was discovered the skeleton of the
luckless damsel, her mummy baby pressed against her breast.
The destruction of this tower was looked upon as a
judgment of Providence, an expression of its indignation
against the authors of this foul deed. None have dared
to rebuild it. The crumbling ruins were removed, and
the foundations alone attest that it had once existed.
The interior of the castle is fitted up with a luxury
almost unknown in Denmark. As we descended by the
spiral staircase of the tower, which leads to the garden,
its narrow window, now lighted with purple glass, cast
a cool pleasant light on the small statuettes of Florence
alabaster which are ranged on brackets down the open
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