with Sir Osmund
Neville. Poor soul! It would melt the nails out of a rusty horse-shoe to
see how she moans herself, when she can steal privily to her chamber.
They say the knight caught her weeping once over some token that
belonged to Sir William, and he burnt it before her face, ill-treating
her into the bargain."

"How came she to wed this churl?"

"Oh, it's a sorry history!"--The speaker paused, and it was at the
pilgrim's entreaty that he thus continued:--

"Parson Cliderhow had his paw in the mischief. She was in a manner
forced either to wed, or, in the end, to have found herself and her
children with never a roof-tree above their heads."

"How?--Sir William did not leave her portionless?"

"I know not; but Sir Osmund had, or pretended he had, got a grant from
the Earl of Lancaster for possession of all that belonged to Sir
William, as a reward for his great services; and unless she wed
him--why, you may guess what follows, when a lone woman is left in a
wooer's clutches. I shall never forget their wedding-day; it should
rather have been her burying, by the look on't. Her long veil was more
like a winding-sheet than a bride's wimple."

During this recital the palmer drew his seat closer to the hearth. He
leant him over his staff, absorbed in that conscious stupor which seems
at once shut out from all connection with external objects, and yet
intensely alive to their impressions. Suddenly he rose, tightened his
sandals, and looking round, appeared as if about to depart.

"It is our late master's birthday," said the loquacious informant: "ten
years ago there was free commons at the hall for man and beast. Now,
save on almous-days, when some half-dozen doitering old bodies get a
snatch at the broken meat, not a man of us thrusts his nose into the
knight's buttery but by stealth. Sir William's banner has not been
hoisted, as it was wont on this day, since he left, with fifty armed men
in his train, to help the king, then hard pressed in the Scottish wars.
Ye may get an alms among the poor to-day, but have an eye to the Welsh
bowmen: these be the knight's privy guard, and hold not the quality of
his guests in much respect."

Here the smith's angry garrulity was interrupted by Daniel Hardseg, a
sort of deputy house-steward, whose duty it was to look after all
business not immediately connecting itself with any other department in
the household. He was prime executive in most of the out-door duty, and
a parti