orrowed Mr. Squills's
chaise and driven over to our market-town, for the express purpose of
greeting the Captain's eyes with the face of his old chief.

My uncle changed color, rose, lifted my mother's hand to his lips, and
sat himself down again in silence.

"I have heard," said the Captain after a pause, "that the Marquis of
Hastings, who is every inch a soldier and a gentleman,--and that is
saying not a little, for he measures seventy-five inches from the
crown to the sole,--when he received Louis XVIII. (then an exile) at
Donnington, fitted up his apartments exactly like those his Majesty had
occupied at the Tuileries. It was a kingly attention (my Lord Hastings,
you know, is sprung from the Plantagenets),--a kingly attention to a
king. It cost some money and made some noise. A woman can show the same
royal delicacy of heart in this bit of porcelain, and so quietly that we
men all think it a matter of course, brother Austin."

"You are such a worshipper of women, Roland, that it is melancholy to
see you single. You must marry again!"

My uncle first smiled, then frowned, and lastly sighed somewhat heavily.

"Your time will pass slowly in your old tower, poor brother," continued
my father, "with only your little girl for a companion."

"And the past!" said my uncle; "the past, that mighty world--"

"Do you still read your old books of chivalry,--Froissart and the
Chronicles, Palmerin of England, and Amadis of Gaul?"

"Why," said my uncle, reddening, "I have tried to improve myself with
studies a little more substantial. And," he added with a sly smile,
"there will be your great book for many a long winter to come."

"Um!" said my father, bashfully.

"Do you know," quoth my uncle, "that Dame Primmins is a very intelligent
woman,--full of fancy, and a capital story-teller?"

"Is not she, uncle?" cried I, leaving my fox in the corner. "Oh, if you
could hear her tell the tale of King Arthur and the Enchanted Lake, or
the Grim White Woman!"

"I have already heard her tell both," said my uncle.

"The deuce you have, brother! My dear, we must look to this. These
captains are dangerous gentlemen in an orderly household. Pray, where
could you have had the opportunity of such private communications with
Mrs. Primmins?"

"Once," said my uncle, readily, "when I went into her room, while she
mended my stock; and once--" He stopped short, and looked down.

"Once when? Out with it."

"When she was warming my bed,