King Mathias and the Beggar Boy

Towards the close of a gloomy day in autumn, a very dusty traveller was riding quietly up to a castle which stood perched on a height in one of the northern counties of Hungary. A very extraordinary-looking castle it was, if it was a castle at all, which one might be inclined to doubt; for it looked more like a square block hewn by giants out of the ribs of the mountain, and left to itself for centuries, until its walls had become mouldy and moss-grown. One thing which gave it an odd appearance was that, as far as could be seen, it had no roof; the fact being that it was built round a quadrangle, and that the roof, or rather half-roof, sloped downwards and inwards from the top of the outer walls.