ligation.

He looked steadfastly on them as they approached, but without the
slightest show either of respect or good-will.

"Prithee, stand a little on one side, that we may pass by without fear
of offence," said Nicholas Haworth, good-humouredly.

"And whither away, young master and my dainty miss?" was the reply, in
his usual easy and familiar address, such as might have suited one of
rank and condition.

Haworth, little disturbed thereat, said with a careless
smile,--"Troth, thou hast not been so long away but thou mightest have
heard of the wedding-feast to-night, and, peradventure, been foremost
for the crumbs of the banquet."

"I know well there's mumming and foolery a-going on yonder; and I
suppose ye join the merry-making, as they call it?"

"Ay, that do we; and so, prithee, begone."

"And your masks will ne'er be the wiser for't, I trow," said the
beggar, looking curiously upon them from beneath his penthouse lids.

"But that I could laugh at his impertinence, Alice, I would even now
chide him soundly, and send his pitiful carcase to the stocks for this
presumption. Hark thee, I do offer good counsel when I warn thee to
shift thyself, and that speedily, ere I use the readiest means for thy
removal."

"Gramercy, brave ruffler; but I must e'en gi'e ye the path; an' so
pass on to the masking, my Lord Essex and his maiden queen."

He said this with a cunning look and a chuckle of self-gratulation at
the knowledge he had somehow or other acquired of the parts they were
intended to enact.

"Foul fa' thy busy tongue, where foundest thou this news? I've a
month's mind to change my part, Alice, but that there's neither
leisure nor opportunity, and they lack our presence at the nuptials."

"How came he by this knowledge, and the fashion of our masks?"
inquired Alice from her brother. "Truly, I could join belief with
those who say that he obtained it not through the ordinary channels
open to our frail and fallible intellects."

Mistress Alice, "the gentle Alice," was reckoned fair and
well-favoured. Strongly tinctured with romance, her superstition was
continually fed by the stories then current in relation to her own
dwelling, and by the generally-received opinions about witches and
other supernatural things which yet lingered, loth to depart from
these remote limits of civilisation.

"Clegg-Hall Boggart" was the type of a notion too general to be
disbelieved; yet were the inmates, in all probability,