ger glasses were after
meals, although they only graced the higher board.

Wine, hippocras, mead, ale--there was plenty to eat and drink, and
when the hunger was satisfied a palmer or pilgrim, who had but
recently arrived from the Holy Land, sang a touching ballad about
his adventures and sufferings in that Holy Land:

Trodden by those blessed feet
Which for our salvation were
Nailed unto the holy rood.

He sang of the captivity of Jerusalem under her Saracen rulers; of
the Holy Places, nay, of the Sepulchre itself, in the hands of the
heathen. That song, and kindred songs, had already caused rivers of
blood to be shed; men were now getting hardened to the tale, albeit
the Lady Sybil shed tears.

For she thought of her brother Roger, who had taken the Cross at
that gathering at Cross-in-Hand when labouring under his sire's
dire displeasure, and who had fallen yet more deeply under the ban,
owing to events with which our readers are but partially
acquainted.

And now, where Roger sat, she saw her own husband--well
beloved--yet had he not effaced the memory of her brother. And she
longed to see that brother's son, of whom she had heard, recognised
as the heir of Walderne.

The palmer sang, and his song told of one, a father stern, who bade
his son wash off the guilt of some grievous sin in the blood of the
unbeliever--how that son went forth, full of zeal--but went forth
to find his efforts blasted by a haunting, malignant fiend he had
himself armed with power to blast; how at length, conquering all
opposition, he had reached the holy shore, and embarked on every
desperate enterprise, until he was laid out for dead, when--

At this moment the chapel bell rang for the evening prayers, which
were never later than curfew, for as men then rose with the sun it
was well to go to bed with him, so they all flocked to the chapel.
The office commonly called Compline was said, and the little
sanctuary was left again vacant and dark save where the solitary
lamp twinkled before the altar.

But the Lady Sybil did not seek her couch. She remained kneeling in
devotion before the altar, which her wealth and piety had founded.
Nor was she alone. The palmer yet knelt on the floor of the
sanctuary.

When they had been left alone together for some minutes, and all
was still save the wind which howled without she rose and said:

"Tell me who thou art, O mysterious man: thy voice reminds me of
one long dead."

"Dead to the wor