never went, and died at last without ever having seen the
inside of the cavern.

"My father told me many wondrous tales about the place, whereof for a
long time I have been able to remember nothing; yet, by some means or
another, a certain story has grown up in my heart, which I will tell you
something of; a story which no living creature ever told me, though I do
not remember the time when I knew it not. Yes, I will tell you some of
it, not all perhaps, but as much as I am allowed to tell."

The man stopped and pondered awhile, leaning over the fire where the
flames slept under the caked coal: he was an old man, and his hair was
quite white. He spoke again presently. "And I have fancied sometimes,
that in some way, how I know not, I am mixed up with the strange story I
am going to tell you." Again he ceased, and gazed at the fire, bending
his head down till his beard touched his knees; then, rousing himself,
said in a changed voice (for he had been speaking dreamily hitherto):
"That strange-looking old house that you all know, with the limes and yew-
trees before it, and the double line of very old yew-trees leading up
from the gateway-tower to the porch--you know how no one will live there
now because it is so eerie, and how even that bold bad lord that would
come there, with his turbulent followers, was driven out in shame and
disgrace by invisible agency. Well, in times past there dwelt in that
house an old grey man, who was lord of that estate, his only daughter,
and a young man, a kind of distant cousin of the house, whom the lord had
brought up from a boy, as he was the orphan of a kinsman who had fallen
in combat in his quarrel. Now, as the young knight and the young lady
were both beautiful and brave, and loved beauty and good things ardently,
it was natural enough that they should discover as they grew up that they
were in love with one another; and afterwards, as they went on loving one
another, it was, alas! not unnatural that they should sometimes have half-
quarrels, very few and far between indeed, and slight to lookers-on, even
while they lasted, but nevertheless intensely bitter and unhappy to the
principal parties thereto. I suppose their love then, whatever it has
grown to since, was not so all-absorbing as to merge all differences of
opinion and feeling, for again there were such differences then. So,
upon a time it happened, just when a great war had arisen, and Lawrence
(for that was the k