down senseless, with his ghastly guide's words
ringing in his ears--

"Shame on the coward who sounded a horn
When he might have unsheathed a sword!"

In the morning, the unfortunate Sir Guy awoke to find himself lying
amongst the ruins, and forthwith began his ceaseless and unavailing
search for the lady he had failed to rescue.

The legend similar to this in many respects is that of King Arthur and
his court at Sewingshields, to which allusion has already been made in
the chapter on the Roman Wall. I cannot do better than give this in the
words of Mr. Hodgson, who tells the story in his History of
Northumberland. "Immemorial tradition has asserted that King Arthur,
his queen Guenever, his court of lords and ladies, and his hounds were
enchanted in some cave of the crags, or in a hall below the castle of
Sewingshields, and would continue entranced there until someone should
first blow a bugle-horn that lay on a table near the entrance of the
hall, and then with the 'sword of the stone' (was this Excalibur?) cut a
garter, also placed there beside it. But none had ever heard where the
entrance to this enchanted hall was, till the farmer at Sewingshields,
about fifty years since, was sitting knitting on the ruins of the
castle, and his clew fell, and ran downwards through a rush of briars
and nettles, as he supposed, into a subterraneous passage. Full in the
faith that the entrance to King Arthur's hall had now been discovered,
he cleared the briary portal of its weeds and rubbish, and entering a
vaulted passage, followed in his darkling way the thread of his clew.
The floor was infested with toads and lizards; and the dark wings of
bats, disturbed by his unhallowed intrusion, flitted fearfully around
him. At length his sinking courage was strengthened by a dim, distant
light, which as he advanced grew gradually brighter, till all at once he
entered a vast and vaulted hall, in the centre of which a fire without
fuel, from a broad crevice in the floor blazed with a high and lambent
flame, that showed all the carved walls and fretted roof, and the
monarch and his queen and court reposing around, in a theatre of thrones
and costly couches. On the floor beyond the fire lay the faithful and
deep-toned pack of thirty couple of hounds; and on a table before it the
spell-dissolving horn, sword, and garter. The shepherd reverently, but
firmly, grasped the sword, and as he drew it leisurely from its rusty
scabbard, the eyes