The Kims were by no means magnificent people, yet they inhabited a castle. A small income can go a great way. Eight or nine hundred a year does wonders, if we ignored their mysteriously long life span. Scantily enough theirs would have answered among wealthy people in the city. But here, in this lonely and primitive place, where everything was cheap, Jongwoon really didn’t see how ever so much more money would at all materially add to their comforts, or even luxuries.

Jongwoon’s father had been in the military, and retired upon a pension and his patrimony, and purchased the small estate as a bargain.

Nothing could be more picturesque or solitary. It stands on a slight eminence in a forest. The very old and narrow road passed in front of its drawbridge, never raised in Jongwoon’s time, and its moat, stocked with perch, and sailed over by many swans, and floating on its surface white fleets of water-lilies.

Over all this scenery, the castle showed its many-windowed front; its towers, and its Gothic chapel.

The forest opened in an irregular and very picturesque glade before its gate, and at the right a steep Gothic bridge carried the road over a stream, winding within deep shadows through the wood.

Jongwoon had always said this was a very lonely place, it is up to whomever this may concern to judge whether he speaks the truth or not in this instance. Looking from the hall door towards the road, the forest in which their castle inhabited extended fifteen miles to the right, and twelve to the left. The nearest inhabited village was around seven miles to the left.

He mentioned the “nearest inhabited village” because there was, a mere three miles westward, a ruined village with its quaint little church, now roofless, amidst the mouldering tombs of the proud family of the Parks, that particular line extinct, who once owned the equally desolate chateau which, in the thick of the forest, overlooked the silent ruins of the town.

Respecting the cause of the desertion of that striking and melancholy spot, there was a legend Jongwoon would relate to whomever this may concern another time.

The party inhabiting their castle was very small, which could be both the best and worst thing possible in the coming events. Jongwoon’s life was, notwithstanding, rather a solitary one, and would be for over a hundred years hereafter.

The first occurrence in his existence, which produced a terrible impression upon his mind, was one of the very earliest incidents of his life which he could recollect. Some people would think it so trifling that it shouldn’t have been recorded here. 

The nursery, as it was called, though Jongwoon had taken up residence in the r