What was to be done? the town-gates were shut. "Is there no hostel, no
castle where we can sleep?" asked Otto of the sentinel at the gate.
"I am so hungry that in lack of better food I think I could eat my
grandmamma."
The sentinel laughed at this hyperbolical expression of hunger, and
said, "You had best go sleep at the Castle of Windeck yonder;" adding
with a peculiarly knowing look, "Nobody will disturb you there."
At that moment the moon broke out from a cloud, and showed on a hill
hard by a castle indeed--but the skeleton of a castle. The roof was
gone, the windows were dismantled, the towers were tumbling, and the
cold moonlight pierced it through and through. One end of the building
was, however, still covered in, and stood looking still more frowning,
vast, and gloomy, even than the other part of the edifice.
"There is a lodging, certainly," said Otto to the sentinel, who pointed
towards the castle with his bartizan; "but tell me, good fellow, what
are we to do for a supper?"
"Oh, the castellan of Windeck will entertain you," said the man-at-arms
with a grin, and marched up the embrasure; the while the archers, taking
counsel among themselves, debated whether or not they should take up
their quarters in the gloomy and deserted edifice.
"We shall get nothing but an owl for supper there," said young Otto.
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