But neither Regnald nor young Eustace came.
And when 't was found that neither slept at Hall
That night, their couches being still unpressed,
The servants stared. And as the day wore on,
And evening came, and then another day,
And yet another, till a week had gone,
The wonder spread, and riders sent in haste
Scoured the country, dragged the neighboring streams,
Tracked wayward footprints to the great chalk bluffs,
But found not Regnald, lord of Garnaut Hall.
The place that knew him knew him never more.

The red leaf withered and the green leaf grew.
And Agnes Vail, the little Saxon rose,
Waxed pale and paler, till the country-folk
Half guessed her fate was somehow intertwined
With that dark house. When her pure soul had passed,--
Just as a perfume floats from out the world,--
Wild tales were told of how the brothers loved
The self-same maid, whom neither one would wed
Because the other loved her as his life;
And that the two, at midnight, in despair,
From one sheer cliff plunged headlong in the sea.
And when, at night, the hoarse east-wind rose high,
Rattled the lintels, clamoring at the door,
The children huddled closer round the hearth
And whispered very softly with themselves,
"That's Master Regnald looking for his Bride!"

The red leaf withered and the green leaf grew.
Decay and dolor settled on the Hall.
The wind went howling in the dismal rooms,
Rustling the arras; and the wainscot-mouse
Gnawed through the mighty Garnauts on the wall,
And made a lodging for her glossy young
In dead Sir Egbert's empty coat-of-mail;
The griffon dropped from off the blazoned shield;
The stables rotted; and a poisonous vine
Stretched its rank nets across the lonely lawn.
For no one went there,--'t was a haunted spot.
A legend killed it for a kindly home,--
A grim estate, which every heir in turn
Left to the orgies of the wind and rain,
The newt, the toad, the spider, and the mouse.

The red leaf withered and the green leaf grew.
And once, 't is said, the Queen reached out her hand
And let it rest on Cecil's velvet sleeve,
And said, "I prithee, Cecil, tell us now,
Was 't ever known what happened to those men,--
Those Garnauts?--were they never, never found?"
The weasel face had fain looked wise for her,
But no one of tha