walls. If not an impertinent question, is it long since you have known
your intended bride?"

"Yes, very long."

"And always loved her?"

"Always, from her infancy. Out of all womankind, she was designed to be
my life's playmate and my soul's purifier. I know not what might have
become of me, if the thought of her had not walked beside me as my
guardian angel. For, like many vagrants from the beaten high roads of
the world, there is in my nature something of that lawlessness which
belongs to high animal spirits, to the zest of adventure, and the warm
blood that runs into song, chiefly because song is the voice of a joy.
And no doubt, when I look back on the past years I must own that I have
too often been led astray from the objects set before my reason, and
cherished at my heart, by erring impulse or wanton fancy."

"Petticoat interest, I presume," interposed Kenelm, dryly.

"I wish I could honestly answer 'No,'" said the minstrel, colouring
high. "But from the worst, from all that would have permanently blasted
the career to which I intrust my fortunes, all that would have rendered
me unworthy of the pure love that now, I trust, awaits and crowns
my dreams of happiness, I have been saved by the haunting smile in a
sinless infantine face. Only once was I in great peril,--that hour of
peril I recall with a shudder. It was at Luscombe."

"At Luscombe!"

"In the temptation of a terrible crime I thought I heard a voice say,
'Mischief! Remember the little child.' In that supervention which is so
readily accepted as a divine warning, when the imagination is morbidly
excited, and when the conscience, though lulled asleep for a moment, is
still asleep so lightly that the sigh of a breeze, the fall of a leaf,
can awake it with a start of terror, I took the voice for that of my
guardian angel. Thinking it over later, and coupling the voice with the
moral of those weird lines you repeated to me so appositely the next
day, I conclude that I am not mistaken when I say it was from your lips
that the voice which preserved me came."

"I confess the impertinence: you pardon it?"

The minstrel seized Kenelm's hand and pressed it earnestly.

"Pardon it! Oh, could you but guess what cause I have to be grateful,
everlastingly grateful! That sudden cry, the remorse and horror of my
own self that it struck into me,--deepened by those rugged lines which
the next day made me shrink in dismay from 'the face of my darling
sin'! Then