THE RED DRAGON

a year to repent, and you have not for a single instant cursed your crime. Let them die with you, then, your honors whose source is cursed, your ill-gotten riches, and this castle that you have defiled."

Then, the two shadows attached themselves to the two pillars that supported the room.

And while they shook them like a tree from which one wishes to make the fruit fall, the winter wind redoubled its rage, and the towers and the ramparts of the castle wavered under its attacks like poorly planted vine stakes.

Soon, André heard around him superhuman cries, the howls of unleashed demons: the specters looked at him with flaming eyes, and suddenly the two pillars of the vault collapsed; a great sound of stones rolling on their foundations resounded; the ground upon which the castle was built crumbled, and walls, towers, gold, silver, diamonds, and riches of all kinds were swallowed into the earth with their unworthy possessor.

Where there was once a mountain, a deep abyss had just opened; this is what is called today the Black Hole.

The storyteller stopped.

Claude Michu had listened to him with an interest mixed with dread.

As for Madeloun, she had not lost a word of the story; yet, she did not declare her curiosity satisfied.

"Father Simounen," she said, "you have not finished. Are there not terrible rumors running through the country about the Black Hole?"

"Yes, my daughter; it is said that on certain days the demons hold their sabbat at the place where the body, the castle, and the treasures of André the fratricide are buried."