nd some of
the brethren, thinking that now our turn had come, followed after
him. The contention between us was sharp. Yet his words struck into me
like knives, and scarce knowing what I did, I cried out aloud, for a
strange power was over me. Thereat he fixed his eyes upon me and spake
sharply to me, as if he knew that I was resisting the Spirit of the
Lord. I know not why, but I was forced to cry out again, "Do not
pierce me so with thine eyes. Keep thine eyes off me."'

'Well,' questioned the elder man, 'and what followed? Did his eyes
leave thee?'

'They have never left me,' replied the other. 'Wherever I go those
eyes burn me yet, although the man himself lies fast in gaol among the
thieves and murderers, in the worst and most loathsome of the
dungeons. Thither I go every day to assure myself that he is fast
caged behind thick walls, and to rejoice my eyes with the sight of the
gibbet nailed high over-head upon the castle wall. Men say he shall
swing there soon, but of that I know not. Wilt thou come with me now,
for see, the bridge is free?'

'Not I,' returned the pastor, moodily, as he shuffled away, like a man
ill at ease with himself.

Little James, from his perch on the parapet, had drunk in greedily
every word of this conversation. Directly the bridge was clear he
crept down and followed the deacon like a shadow. They passed over the
silver Eden and up the main street of the city, paved with rough,
uneven stones, and with an open sewer flowing through the centre of
it. Right across the busy market-place they passed, before the deacon
halted beneath the castle walls.

Full of noise and hubbub was Carlisle city that day; yet, as the two
entered the courtyard of the castle, James was aware of another
sound, rising clear above the tumult of the town--strains of music,
surely, that came from a fiddle. As they stepped under the inner
gateway and approached the Norman Keep, the fiddler himself came in
sight playing with might and main, under a barred window about six
feet from the ground. By the fiddler's side, urging him on, was a
huge, burly man with a red face. Whenever the fiddler showed signs of
weariness the man beside him raising a large tankard of ale to his
lips would force him to drink of it, saying, 'Play up, man! Play up!'

The thin, clear strains of the fiddle rose up steadily towards the
barred window, but, above them, James caught another sound that
floated yet more steadily out through the ba