whereabouts in the Chase they lived, and what they did when they
were there, I had no more definite idea than who the Emperor Prester
John or the Man in the Moon might be.

FOOTNOTE:

[H] In my youth ancient persons as frequently spoke of the hangman as
"Gregory"--and he was so named at the trial of the Regicides in
1660-61--as by his later title of "Jack Ketch."--J. D.

CHAPTER THE SIXTH.

THE HISTORY OF MY GRANDFATHER, WHO WAS SO LONG KEPT A PRISONER IN ONE OF
THE KING'S CASTLES IN THE EAST COUNTRY.

AT the time when his Majesty Charles II. was so happily restored to the
throne of these kingdoms, there was, and had been, confined for upwards
of ten years, in one of his Majesty's Castles in the eastern part of
this kingdom, a certain Prisoner. His Name was known to none, not even
to the guards who kept watch over him, so to speak, night and day,--not
even to the gaoler, who had been told that he must answer with his Head
for his safe custody, who had him always in a spying, fretful
overlooking, and who slept every night with the keys of the Captive's
cell under his pillow. The Castle where he lay in hold has been long
since levelled to the earth, if, indeed, it ever had any earth to rest
upon, and was not rather stayed upon some jutting fragment of Rock
washed away at last by the ever-encroaching sea. Nay, of its exact
situation I am not qualified to tell. I never saw the place, and my
knowledge of it is confined to a bald hearsay, albeit of the Deeds that
were done within its walls I can affirm the certitude with Truth. From
such shadowy accounts as I have collected, the edifice would seem to
have consisted but of a single tower or donjon-keep very strong and
thick, and defying the lashings of the waves, almost as though it were
some Pharos or other guide to mariners. It was surrounded by a low stone
wall of prodigious weight of masonry, and was approached from the
mainland by a drawbridge and barbican. But for many months of the year
there was no mainland within half a mile of it, and the King's Castle
could only be reached by boats. Men said that the Sun never shone there
but for ten minutes before and ten minutes after a storm, and there were
almost always storms lowering over or departing from that dismal place.
The Castle was at least two miles from any human habitation; for the few
fishermen's cabins, made of rotten boats, hogsheads nailed together, and
the like, which had pitifully nestled under th