CHAPTER XVISHOWS HOW THE GREAT SWORD WAS MISSED FROM THE WALL
THE day passed slowly for Scanlon; he put in a few hours with the newspapers, which were always brought to Schwartzberg about noon; then he selected an armful of likely looking books and took them to his room.
But the adventures therein related were not to his taste. He was in no humour for the accumulation of unexplained incident; what he wanted at that particular time was clarity—a breeze which would blow through the castle of intrigue and drive out the obscuring vapours.
“This fellow,” remarked he, turning the leaves of one of the books, “is too much like myself. Here he starts out under a cloud; and as he goes along, instead of getting rid of it, he adds to it. At page one hundred he has a collection of clouds the like of
