to put up. But never mind;
in a day or two we shall make all worthy a general of your illustrious
name,--for he was a great general, Pisistratus the First, was he not,
brother?"

"All tyrants are," said my father; "the knack of soldiering is
indispensable to them."

"Oh! you may say what you please here," said Roland, in high good humor,
as he drew me downstairs, still apologizing for my quarters, and so
earnestly that I made up my mind that I was to be put into an oubliette.
Nor were my suspicions much dispelled on seeing that we had to leave the
keep, and pick our way into what seemed to me a mere heap of rubbish
on the dexter side of the court. But I was agreeably surprised to find,
amidst these wrecks, a room with a noble casement, commanding the whole
country, and placed immediately over a plot of ground cultivated as a
garden. The furniture was ample, though homely; the floors and walls
well matted; and, altogether, despite the inconvenience of having to
cross the courtyard to get to the rest of the house, and being wholly
without the modern luxury of a bell, I thought that I could not be
better lodged.

"But this is a perfect bower, my dear uncle! Depend on it, it was the
bower-chamber of the Dames de Caxton,--Heaven rest them!"

"No," said my uncle, gravely, "I suspect it must have been the
chaplain's room, for the chapel was to the right of you. An earlier
chapel, indeed, formerly existed in the keep tower; for, indeed, it is
scarcely a true keep without a chapel, well, and hall. I can show you
part of the roof of the first, and the two last are entire; the well is
very curious, formed in the substance of the wall at one angle of the
hall. In Charles the First's time our ancestor lowered his only son down
in a bucket, and kept him there six hours, while a malignant mob was
storming the tower. I need not say that our ancestor himself scorned to
hide from such a rabble, for he was a grown man. The boy lived to be a
sad spendthrift, and used the well for cooling his wine. He drank up a
great many good acres."

"I should scratch him out of the pedigree, if I were you. But pray, have
you not discovered the proper chamber of that great Sir William about
whom my father is so shamefully sceptical?"

"To tell you a secret," answered the Captain, giving me a sly poke in
the ribs, "I have put your father into it! There are the initial letters
W. C. let into the cusp of the York rose, and the date, three years
befo