mony upon his spirit. The page was seated in the narrow
cloisters,--the lute, his untiring companion, enticing a few chords from
his touch, playful and gentle as the feelings that awaked them; some old
and quaint chant, scarce worth the telling, but cherished in the heart's
inmost shrine, from the hallowed nature of its associations. A deep
slumber crept heavily on the cavalier, but the merchant's daughter still
haunted him: sometimes snatched away from his embrace just as a rosy
smile was kindling on her lips; at others, she met him with frowns and
menace, but ere he could speak to her she had disappeared. Then was he
tottering on the battlements of some old turret, when a storm arose, the
maiden crept to his side, but in an instant, with a hideous crash, she
was borne away by the rude grasp of the tempest. He awoke, with a
mortifying discovery that the crash had been of a somewhat less
equivocal nature. A cabinet of costly workmanship lay overturned at his
feet, and a rich vase, breathing odours, strewed the floor in a thousand
fragments.

The noise brought up several of the college servitors; to rid himself
from the annoyance he ascended the roof, then protected by low
battlements, and leaded, so that a person might walk round the building
and pursue his meditations without interruption.

On this day, teeming with events, Dr Dee had been too closely engaged in
parish duties to give heed to these love fancies, and even had he been
ever so free to exercise his judgment in the matter, it is more than
likely Rodolf would not have opened to him the proceedings then afoot.
He well knew that the Doctor yet bore no good-will to Kelly, and might
possibly thwart his designs, to the undoing of any good purposed by the
strange transactions that had already occurred; he resolved, therefore,
to let this day pass, ere he opened his lips on the subject. But how to
while away the hours until evening was a most embarrassing problem.
Sleep he had tried, but he found no wish to repeat the experiment;
reading was just then foreign to his humour; mathematics must, that day,
go unstudied. After beating time to at least a dozen strange metres, he
hit upon the happy contrivance of writing a love-song, as a kind of
expedient to restore the equilibrium. He was rather unskilled at the
work; but the pen becomes eloquent when the soul moves it. We will,
however, leave him at this thrifty employment, having no design, gentle
reader, to make the o