was fancy or reality she knew not, but as she looked
curiously through its ivied tracery she thought the Red Woman was
peering out maliciously upon them. She shrank aside, and pointed to
the spot; but there was nothing visible save the dark and crumbling
ruins, from which their steps were echoed with a dull and sullen
sound.

The night wind sighed round the grey battlements, and from its hidden
recesses came moans and whispers--at least so it seemed to their
heated imaginations.

"Let us hasten hence," said Grace; "I like not this lonely spot. There
was always a fear and a mystery about it. The tale of the invisible
sylphid and Eleanor Byron's elfish lover haunts me whenever I pass by,
and I feel as though something was near, observing and influencing
every movement and every thought."

"Come, come, a-done I pray. Let not fear o'ermaster reason, else we
shall see bogles in every bush."

Above the gateway, in the little square tower now pulled down, was a
loophole, nearly concealed by climbing shrubs, which rendered it easy
for a person within to look out without being observed. As they passed
a low humming din was heard. Then a rude ditty trolled from some not
unskilful performer. The lovers stayed to listen, when a dark figure
issued out of the gateway singing--

"The bat haunts the tower,
And the redbreast the bower,
And the merry little sparrow by the chimney hops,
Good e'en, hoots master owl,
To-whoo, to-whoo, his troll,
Sing heigho, swing the can with"----

"What, thee, Tim! Is that thy stupid face?" said Gervase, breaking in
upon his ditty, and right glad to be delivered from supernatural
fears, though the object of them proved only this strolling minstrel.
"Thou might as well kill us outright as frighten us to death."

He that stood before them was one of those wandering musicians that
haunt fairs and merry-makings, wakes, and such like pastimes; playing
the fiddle and jewtrump too at weddings and alehouses; in short, any
sort of idleness never came amiss to these representatives of the old
Troubadours. A tight oval cap covered his shaggy poll; he was clad in
a coarse doublet or jerkin slashed in the fashion of the time, while
his nether integuments were fastened in the primitive mode by a wooden
skewer. He could conjure too, and play antics to set the folks agape;
but as to his honesty, it was of that dubious sort that few cared to
have it in trust. He wa