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第4章 与艾路雷朵约战

The cauldron was simmering, sending its diamond sparks in all directions, so blindingly bright that it turned all else to velvety blackness. Nothing happened.…

the garden about sunset, and remembering, as I looked at him,

The having originated a precaution which was already in

the flowers in this old garden awake and expand, and the birds

the morning, had made a speech to him through the head-boy, and

that the gilding is slime and the silk draperies cobwebs; that the

The Little Hangletons all agreed that the old house was “creepy.” Half a century ago, something strange and horrible had happened there, something that the older inhabitants of the village still liked to discuss when topics for gossip were scarce. The story had been picked over so many times, and had been embroidered in so many places, that nobody was quite sure what the truth was anymore. Every version of the tale, however, started in the same place: Fifty years before, at daybreak on a fine summer's morning when the Riddle House had still been well kept and impressive, a maid had entered the drawing room to find all three Riddles dead.

the mellowing grain, the sombre woodland, the clear and sunny

the glen, towards its head, wound to their very core.