er hood and mantle were on the brink--but
her body! why, it never jumped out again to look for them--that's all."

"But did no one look for the body?" carelessly inquired De Poininges.

"The knight groped diligently in the castle ditch for many days; but
light fishes make light nets, as we say. There was no corpse to be
found, and many an Ave Maria has been said for her soul."

"What cause was then assigned for this fearful deed?"

"'Tis said she was in love, and went mad! I wot she was ever sighing and
rambling about the house, and would seldom venture out alone, looking as
though she were in jeopardy, and dreaded some hidden danger."

"Thinkest thou, friend, that some hidden danger might not be the cause;
and this show of her drowning but a feint or device that should turn
aside the current of their inquiry?"

The clerk looked anxious and uneasy, sore puzzled, as it might seem, to
shape out an answer. At length, finding that the question could not be
evaded, he proceeded with much hesitation as follows:--

"Safe as my Lord Cardinal at his prayers--she is dead though; for I
heard her wraith wailing and shrieking up the woods that night as I
stood in the priory close. It seemed like, as it were, making its way
through the air from Lathom, for the smell of consecration, I reckon."

"Go on," said De Poininges, whose wits were shrewdly beginning to gather
intelligence from these furtive attempts at concealment.

"Well-a-day," continued the clerk, draining an ample potation, "I've
heard strange noises thereabout; and the big building there, men say, is
haunted by the ghost."

"Where is the building thou speakest of?"

"The large granary beyond the postern leading from the prior's house
towards the mill. I have not passed thereby since St Mark's vigil, and
then it came." Here he looked round, stealing a whisper across the
bench--"I heard it: there was a moaning and a singing by turns; but the
wind was loud, so that I could scarcely hear, though when I spake of it
to old Geoffrey the gardener, he said the prior had laid a ghost, and it
was kept there upon prayer and penance for a long season. Now, stranger,
thou mayest guess it was no fault of mine if from this hour I passed the
granary after sunset. The ghost and I have ever kept ourselves pretty
far apart."

"Canst show me this same ghostly dungeon?"

"Ay, can I, in broad daylight; but"--.

"Peradventure thou canst show me the path, or the clue to it; and I