per; would my finger had been cramped when it pulled that trigger! Why would I not have answered his Who goes there!' and trusted at once to thee, my good St. George!" (patting the smoking neck of his champing charger). "I fear I brought him down! I saw him reel on his saddle! Well, what's past cure, is past care! The question is what to do next? the whole country side will be beset, and here am I with an over-ridden horse and an empty stomach-with a house before me, it is true; but what an unpromising old owl's nest! and whom doth it call lord? Haply some cankered old Puritan who, grown over-rusty for the wars, e'en lurks in his horrid den like Master Bunyan's Giant Despair, ready to eat up alive any ill-starred Royalist that falls into his clutches. 'Tis no matter!—as well go in and be hanged, as stay out and be shot!" A long parley ensued between the Cavalier and the ancient domestic who held the honoured office of porter of Wolfhamscote, and whom no very gentle knocking had summoned to the wicket of the porch doors. The usual plea of lost way and life beset, was urged on the one hand, and parried on the other by equally trite excuses, the unsettled times, the vicinity of the hostile armies, the necessity of caution, and chiefly the absence of the master of the mansion. Suddenly the earnest and half-supplicating tones of the stranger, and the unfavourable replies, half growl and half whine of the churlish janitor, were broken upon and silenced by a voice so excessively musical, that the very echoes of the old pile might have been enamoured of its tones, and withal so commanding, that it might have halted the two armies when spurring to the combat: "Sweet words like dropping honey she did shed, And 'twixt the perles and rubies softly brake A silver sound that heavenly music seemed to make." "What parley are you prolonging this inhospitable evening, Master Barnaby? What scorn are you putting upon Wolfhamscote, that the wandering stranger and the tired horse should discover that there is neither bower nor stable, chamber nor stall, meat nor room, in Sir Marmaduke Tracy's homestall?" Hastily and obsequiously the porter turned round towards the speaker, and the door, instantly revolving on its hinges, disclosed the dark attire and white hair of the old man streaming in the wind, and gleaming in the wild flare of the cresset he carried, and which, aided by a bright lamp borne by a female attendant, revealed also the origin of that musical voice, the mistress of the mansion, The Lady of Wolfhamscote. If the stature of Minerva, the majesty of Juno, the voluptuousness of Venus, ever combined in one of their enchanting sex-Hyacinth Tracy was that one. The proud imperial brow,-the large swimming eye, the red and richly moulded lips, the neck and bosom that laughed to scorn the whiteness of the lace and the softness of the velvet robe from which they towered, altogether presented a tablet indeed "For Love bis lofty triumphs to engrave." At this moment bravery and bounty formed the reigning expression of that enchanting countenance, and it is scarcely a portual liberty to say, that it shone like a sun upon the chilling gloom. The summoned menials emulated one another in leading the stranger's charger to stall and manger. And now with a stately courtesy did the Lady Tracy welcome the wanderer obeisance of the most courtly elegance, to Wolfhamscote, and with a profound hand, then led her within one of the the stranger ventured to take the lady's deeply embayed windows that was ranged along the hall, and, in low tones, with some little graceful hesitation, and a slight blush, announced himself as Orlando Lord Lovel, a cornet in his majesty's service, who having had the misfortune, while reconnoitring, to stumble on a vidette of the rebel army, had unadvisedly fired upon the officer, who challenged him, had, he feared, shot him, and was now a fugitive, till he could rejoin the king's head quarters at N-. A lad for a lady's eye, it must be confessed, was this wandering lord: something between a Hercules and an Antinous. "A sweet regard and amiable grace, Mixed with a manly sternness did appeare, It is no marvel then if somewhat more than the mere glee of recognition illumed with complacency the lady's bland and beautiful features as she said "The Lord Orlando Lovel? not less illustrious was his rank, and such methinks his name, whom at the fight of Edghill, Sir Marmaduke saved from the weapons of some half-dozen of his own vassals, whom the youth singly held at bay. Relieved of them, straightway the falcon flew at nobler quarry, and attacked the Tracy himself; marry! Sir Marmaduke was put to his stoccata ere he could disarm him." "An officer of rank," replied Lord Orlando, "did certainly on the field of Edghill, first save me from being buffeted to death;-and then, condescendingly enhanced the obligation, by teaching me, with his own good sword, to be somewhat more cunning of fence; when I yielded me his prisoner, he conducted me to his quarters; treated me courteously, and dismissed me the next day without ransom: but to his name and person I was a stranger. Stand I then in the honoured presence of his dame?" "Even so, my lord: in these disjointed times old Wolfhamscote boasts no higher inmate than its poor lonely mistress; and as for its honours-woe the while, they wax but dim in Sir Marmaduke's absence!" Orlando thought he perceived a slight tinge of sarcasm in the tone, and a lurking smile of scorn in the beautiful Hyacinth's face, as she concluded the sentence. Indeed, rumour said that the Lady Tracy had no objection to wield as much of Sir Marmaduke's awful supremacy as his easy and affectionate though high and honourable heart disposed him to concede. Perhaps the lady read this in Lord Orlando's look, for she added, in an altered tone and with a smile of irresistible fascination, "But though Sir Marmaduke will deplore his absence, and I his poor shadow can but little supply it, still that little shall be assayed. Leave we then these grim arches and echoing windows for a more cheery chamber. Our supper hour draws nigh-and if the Lord Orlando can patiently endure a lonely woman's company Young Lovel hastened to express his acknowledgments, but with some embarrassment, suggested the necessity of his remaining in seclusion till the result of his demele should be ascertained. "The avenger of blood is behind me," he said, "and, though I have hitherto escaped, doubtless the pursuers are now hot upon my traces. I am certain it was an officer of rank whom I shot,-certain too that he fell. Since then, beautiful and gracious lady, you deign to shelter a Royalist in the mansion of a Parliamentarian, he will be contented with the hiding hole and solitude till better fortune advances him to the bower and the society of the Lady Tracy." "Nay, my lord! shame not the hospitality of Wolf hamscote:-the hiding hole you ask, shall be yours, and such as Argus himself could not discover ;—but, though Sir Marmaduke himself thundered at the porch gates, you should first eat and drink!" "Let me be ta'en, let me be put to death, I am content, so thou wilt have it so!" was Orlando's laughing reply; and, imprinting a kiss of solemn gallantry on Lady Tracy's hand, he led her from the deep recess into the open chamber; where, after leaving him to give some directions to the house steward, who stood in respectful silence at the farther end, and listened to her mandates with the most profound deference, the lady called for lights, and Lord Lovel ushered her from the hall. They went up the great staircase, a broad ascent, with many landings, and black carved banisters, the walls being painted with various family chronicles in high colours. This led them to the gallery, through whose windows of enormous arch the moon flooded in; they looked just such as Keats describes, "A casement high and triple-arched there was, And in the midst, 'mong thousand heraldries, And twilight saints, and dim emblazonings, A shielded scutcheon blushed with blood of queens and kings." In the farthest nook of this gallery, a door concealed behind the tapestry hang. ings admitted them into the enchanted bower of this Armida of Wolf hamscote. Its sudden brilliance almost blinded Orlando as he entered from the glimmering gallery. Walls, floor, and ceiling, were mantled with gorgeous colouring. Arras, massy with silver and purple tinctured embroidery, arrayed the walls; the roof was enriched with heraldic medallions, and on the floor the many-coloured fleece of Turkish looms spread its downy substance. A settee, with coverlid and canopy of red brocade, a huge Venetian mirror with flowered frame, a mighty manteltree of glossy oak, lavish in sculptures, in whose centre was emblazoned the great shield of Tracy; a broad table covered with the finest white damask and spread with vessels whose precious material was excelled by their exquisite workmanship, containing the most luxurious viands,-were displayed to the fullest advantage by tall golden candlesticks of antique mould, bronze lamps gleaming with perfumed oil, and a fire of fragrant woods, which irradiated the room. Never did damsel of Arabian lore press the fortunate merchant who had attracted her regard in the Bezestein with such courteous hospitality as did the Lady of Wolfhamscote her somewhat bewildered guest. She carved to him the daintiest viands, she poured for him the most luscious wines, and the two handmaidens who stood behind her purple chair smiled on each other as they watched the looks that accompanied these hospitable courtesies. The Lord Orlando was dazzled, was confounded, and the lady laughed at his embarrassment. His dishevelled attire, whose pointed Vandyke lace, and broidered buff doublet, and burnished cuirass and scarlet sword-belt, seemed little adapted to a lady's banquet, added a charm to the uncommon beauty of his face and figure, and the ludicrous mixture of boyish bashfulness and natural gallantry with which he accepted the Lady Hyacinth's attentions, betrayed itself in a thousand ways. "Now would one think," said the lady, "that you were Sir Guyonard, I the Lady Phœdria, whom Master Edmund Spenser so ungallantly paints. But fear not, my Lord, I shall not pass the bonds of modest merrimake." "And if you did, lady fair," answered Lovel, taking heart of grace, "I should not have the power 'Such dalliance to despise and folly to forsake;' but, in sooth, I cannot answer your affability as I ought; censure me not, I beseech you, if my heart is gloomy when my hand is red!" "Nay, my Lord, I blame you not I! fain would I charm away those melancholy thoughts from your bosom, and that cloud from your brow! Ah, you smile! Joy's ensign becomes that temple so well,-oh, never let despondence advance his black flag there again! A song, Isaura! a song!" pursued the lovely dame; and the maiden, at her word, produced from a red Japan cabinet, a lute of satin wood; and accom panied its chords with her voice; while, leaning one round white arm of exquisite mould on her flushing cheek, and resting the other hand on the table, the Lady of Wolf hamscote beat time with those taper fingers all ablaze with coloured jewels. "No beam so bright as that which breaks So present pleasure charms us most When gladness comes my heart to cheer, Oh, senseless mortals! why embrace A heavy trampling of horse in the avenue, thundering knocks at the great porch doors, succeeded by clamorous voices, and a loud harsh jangling of the manor bell, or storm-clock as it was called, caused the damsel to stint in her song, and the lady to blench in her cheer. Lord Lovel started to his feet; he spoke not, but Lady Tracy instantly dispatched her maidens to inquire the cause of the tumult, and, the moment the door closed upon them, she caught up a lamp-" Yes, yes!" she ejaculated hurriedly, "they are at hand!-you were wise in your precaution; and I was a fool to deem it a boyish panic! we have not a moment to lose,-follow me!" "But your servants, lady! the old garrulous porter too" "Fear not them! they who eat the bread of Wolfhamscote will never betray him who shelters in the shadow of his old walls;-or at the worst, I shall say you are fled by a private door, and have long ago left the mansion. Follow me! follow me quickly-and they must be wizards indeed that find you out!" Thus speaking, she pressed a carved acanthus in the mantelpiece, and a slight click, as of a spring, was heard ;-she then pushed aside the adjoining tapestry, and Orlando was aware of a narrow aperture through which he could barely introduce his comely person. Hyacinth replaced the tapestry and closed the orifice in the wall, then led the way along a last she turned towards Lovel, and held narrow passage to some distance. At Orlando thought they would never have the lamp over a steep winding stair. reached the bottom, and when they did, the tumult, and the trampling, and the close at hand, that a momentary pang of voices, and the bell-ringing, seemed so suspicion thrilled his nerves and sickened his heart. countenance betrayed him, for the Lady Apparently his ingenuous Hyacinth answered his look with a glance and accent of consummate scorn. "Fame speaks the Lord Orlando Lovel courteous as well as gallant, and brave as he is open ;-but this night would go far to contradict her!-a rash deed, a headlong flight, a hasty confidence, an unjust suspicion,-But oh!" she continued, correcting her speech and soften ing her tone," I am harsh and wrong!~ Misfortune mars manhood; and the lion in the field would be the deer in stone walls. Once more, doubt not, my lord! your pursuers are now cooling their heels over head; we are passing below the castle yard; and I'll warrant old Barnaby not to admit a mother's son of them till I come to the wicket; though why the blockheads should be swinging yonder hideous bell, as if they would break the clapper or ding down the belfry tower, I cannot guess. On, on!" The passage proceeded, with many turns and windings, for some space, till they reached a narrow door, ribbed with oak and banded with iron; formidable as appeared this barricade, it opened noiselessly at the slightest touch of Hyacinth's initiated finger, and a toilsome staircase conducted them to a considerable height above their previous course, and terminated in a broad flagged landing, which Lady Tracy allowed the fugitive no time to examine, ere, placing her light on the pavement, she pushed open a large door, and, beckoning Orlando, she said— "Here must be your abode, Lord Lovel, for to-night at least! and longer if your safety is concerned. It has often been used for a similar necessity aforetime;-I see Bright has done my bidding -he is the only one at Wolf hamscote, beside Sir Marmaduke and myself, who knows this lair, for traditional custom if not obligation limits that knowledge to three of the family. Forgive loneliness and gloom, and you will find nought else to censure. Adieu! I must win my way back, with what speed I may, or the old chimneys of Wolfhamscote will certainly fall down upon yonder clamouring knaves. Farewell!-keep the lamplight as much as possible from the window: you shall soon hear your fate :—and, hark ye! tell me when I return, how ye like the seclusion you so much coveted in the Lady's Bower !" And with a silver laugh the Lady of Wolf hamscote vanished, leaving Orlando to make what he could of a high vaulted room, with one tall window of Gothic mould, through whose shrub - muffled panes the moonlight shimmered in broken strains, imperfectly shewing the walls painted with some old legends, more remarkable for the grim looks of their heroes, and the gaudy quaintness of their raiment, than for any interest they might be likely to produce in the luckless visitor. He brought the lamp into the room, but in such a way as to screen it from the window, and perceived a huge bed in a recess, thickly curtained and warmly clothed: and there was a table well garnished with viands; and there was also a long luxurious robe of sables thrown over the antiquely-carved chair; and on a stool by the bed there was a suit of which he could perceive that the lace was of the costliest, the linen the finest, and the cloth and silk of the softest and richest. When he had ascertained as much as he could respecting the interior of his asylum, Orlando softly pushed open a casement in the arched and dingy latticed window. Leaning out, he perceived through the branches of a colossal yew tree the river rolling below its wide and sounding waters. The yew tree itself nearly blocked up the window, and buffeted the panes with its slowly tossing foliage. On looking farther, he discovered that he was more than a furlong from the house of Wolfhamscote, whose moonsilvered vanes and glistening chimneys rose beyond a grove of linden trees, while the garden with its terraces and fountains and parterres lay between. Ivy and a thousand lovely parasites luxuriantly overlaid the buttresses and walls of the building, which was now become Lord Lovel's temporary abode. It was in fact an old banquet-house, which had been cautiously shunned ever since a former knight of Wolfhamscote in a paroxysm of jealousy, had flung his wife over the window-sill into the river below. The place was cursed! The Tracys of subsequent times had encouraged the superstitious reports so likely to ensure the privacy of the tower, which some of them had used for astrological pursuits; some as the secret rendezvous for the conspiracies so frequently agitated in the last Tudor's reign; and others, as a place of refuge so necessary in consequence of those conspiracies. It was indeed admirably adapted to the purpose; the door, which led by broad steps from the garden, was bricked up on a pretence of the dangerous dilapidation of the banquet-house, and the escalier derobe was made with the privity of only two workmen, beside the then Lord of Wolfhamscote, and they were sworn most solemnly to secresy. Not the keenest emissary, therefore, of the army or of the bench, would have dreamed of searching The Haunted Banquet-house, a place so long supposed abandoned to the owl and the jackdaw, that it had acquired the title of Ghost Castle; and the great window which had illuminated so many a summer festival there, was now so curtained by its shrubby treillage, and canopied by the yew tree, that the Lady Hyacinth had apparently little need for her caution respecting the lamplight. Meanwhile the most sedulous attention had been (imperceptibly to the world) devoted to the internal arrangement of Ghost Castle; and Lord Lovel perceived, on awaking the next morning, by as much sunshine as could creep in through the disguised window, a mighty fair and pleasant apartment, which wanted nothing but a good blazing fire to render it a most unobjectionable-prison. No article requisite to the most fastidious toilet of the period was wanting; and when Lord Orlando, in compliment to his hostess' kind cares, had indued the sumptuous change of raiment assigned to his wear, the broad surface of an ebonyframed mirror convinced him how well a carnation-coloured scarf swept athwart a doublet of plum-coloured velvet, and with venial vanity he smiled as his large white hand pushed aside the glossy curls from a forehead broad and bright as Apollo's. But the smile soon vanished, and a sigh succeeded. His seemed a singularly wayward fate. He had joined the royal standard-a lively, sanguine, enterprising youth of some twenty years—had rank and wealth in possession, and fame and honour in prospect; with his lady-love yet to choose, and with a right to be fastidious in his choice,-and all this to be overclouded (perhaps for ever) by this unhappy adventure! "Ah Orlando, Orlando! what an evil trap hast thou chanced upon! Here art thou fairly caught; and never poor mouse looked so silly in its trap! What is worst of all, thou mayest not get out, even if thou couldest. Such a tumult as that at yonder gates! I think I feel the cold iron at my throat even now! The lady too,methought she was wondrous fair,-heaven grant she be honest too! She seemed to affect me marvellously" (another look of youthful complacence at the mirror). "Well, I have none else to trust to in this den; and she seems to have forgotten me!" Some small diversion from his ennui the young Lord Orlando derived from the substantial viands on which he broke his fast; and, as youthful digestion is generally a faithful handmaid to appetite, we may conclude he passed some hours in tolerable tranquillity, humming, at intervals, snatches of these stanzas : Oh! had I but a ladye-love, Whose image cheered my prison-tower, I think I scarce should disapprove But I can only feel and moan Each lively look, each laughing tone, How welcome to a breast and brow That feel no gladness of their own! Alas! how bitter to bemoan That I am darksome and alone. If gravity her features ruled, I too would patiently be grave, And by her calm remembrance schooled, Endure the grief I cannot brave. Alas! I only feel and moan That I am drooping and alone. Noon arrived, and passed by; Lord Lovel chafed his cramped limbs. Evening's shadows lengthened; Lord Lovel paced to and fro for warmth, and even leaped over the table, loaded with good cheer, like the worshippers of Baal on their idol's altar. Night came down, and gloom and disquiet in her train. The wind arose, the rain fell, the angry river roared; and the yew tree, like some monitory spectre, shook his monstrous head at the window. The noble fugitive muffled his limbs in the robe of sables, and, for very weariness, seated himself in the arched recess that formed a kind of window-seat. Thus situated, Lovel might have said with Gawain Douglas, "I saw the moon shed through the window her twinkling glances and wintry light. I heard the horned bird, the night owl, shrieking horribly, with crooked bill, from her cavern. I heard the wild geese, with screaming cries, fly over the city, through the silent night. I heard the jackdaws cackle on the roof of the house; the cranes prognosticating tempest, in a firm phalanx, pierced the air with voice sounding like a trumpet; the kite, perched on an old tree fast by my chamber, cried lamentably." But far more appalling to Orlando than the cries of owls, geese, kites, cranes, and jackdaws (which, like Saint Anthony's demons, seem to have haunted the night-hours of the classic Prelate of Dunkeld) was the protracted absence of the Lady of Wolfhamscote. The night wore late; the very last |