and bring back the right one."

"He really believes it!" exclaimed Charles much diverted. "Tell me,
good Master Elf, who is thy father, I mean not my brother Oberon,
but him of the right one, as thou sayst."

"Mr. Robert Oakshott of Oakwood, sir," said Peregrine.

"A sturdy squire of the country party," said the King. "I am much
minded to secure the lad for an elfin page," he added aside to
Killigrew. "There's a fund of excellent humour and drollery in
those queer eyes of his! So, Sir Hobgoblin, if you are proof
against cold steel, I know not what is to be done with you. Get you
back, and devise some other mode of finding your way home to
fairyland."

Peregrine said not a word of his adventure, so that the surprise of
his family was the greater when overtures were made through Sir
Christopher Wren for his appointment as a royal page.

"I would as soon send my son at once to be a page to Beelzebub,"
returned Major Oakshott.

And though Sir Christopher did not return the answer exactly in
those terms, he would not say that the Puritan Major did not judge
rightly.

CHAPTER III: THE FAIRY KING

"She's turned her right and round about,
And thrice she blew on a grass-green horn,
And she sware by the moon and the stars above
That she'd gar me rue the day I was born."

Old Ballad of Alison Cross.

Dr. Woodford's parish was Portchester, where stood the fine old
royal castle at present ungarrisoned, and partly dismantled in the
recent troubles, on a chalk peninsula, a spur from Portsdown,
projecting above the alluvial flats, and even into the harbour,
whose waves at high tide laved the walls. The church and churchyard
were within the ample circuit of the fortifications, about two
furlongs distant from the main building, where rose the mighty
Norman keep, above the inner court, with a gate tower at this date,
only inhabited by an old soldier as porter with his family. A
massive square tower at each angle of the huge wall likewise defied
decay.

It was on Midsummer eve, that nearly about sundown, Dr. Woodford was
summoned by the severe illness of the gatekeeper's old father, and
his sister-in-law went with him to attempt what her skill could
accomplish for the old man's relief.

They were detained there till the sun had long set, though the air,
saturated with his redness, was full of soft twilight, while the
moon, scarcely past the full, was just high enough to silver the
quiet sea, and throw