en it smiled it smiled wryly, until
rocks toppled and figures fell askew, yet still kept up their pretence
of play against the distorted woodland. Nay, it was worse than this:
fifty times worse. For while the fair show tottered, my Master and
Mistress clung to their love; and yet it was just their love which kept
the foundations rocking.

They lived for each other. They neither visited nor received visits.
Yet they were often, and by degrees oftener, apart; my Master locked up
with his books, my Mistress roaming the walls with her hound or seated
by her lattice high on the seaward side of the castle. Sometimes (but
this was usually on moonlit nights or windless evenings when the sun
sank clear to view over our broad bay) she would take up her lute and
touch it to one of those outlandish love-chants with which she had first
wiled my Master's heart to her. As time went on, stories came to us
that these chants, which fell so softly on the ears of us as we went
about the rooms and gardens, had been heard by fishermen riding by their
nets far in the offing--so far away (I have heard) as the Scillies; and
there were tales of men who, as they listened, had seen the ghosts of
drowned mariners rising and falling on the moon-rays, or floating with
their white faces thrown back while they drank in the music; yea, even
echoing the words of the song in whispers like the flutter of birds'
wings.

When first the word crept about that she was a witch I cannot certainly
say. But in time it did; and, what is more--though I will swear that no
word of Gil Perez' confession ever passed my lips--the common folk soon
held it for a certainty that the cargo saved from the _Saint Andrew_ had
been saved by her magic only; that the plate and rich stuffs seen by my
own eyes were but cheating _simulacra_, and had turned into rubbish at
midnight, scarce an hour before the assault on the Portuguese.

I have wondered since if 'twas this rumour and some belief in it which
held Messrs. Saint Aubyn and Godolphin from offering any further attack
on us. You might say that it was open to them, so believing, to have
denounced her publicly. But in our country Holy Church had little
hold--scarce more than the King's law itself in such matters; and within
my memory it has always come easier to us to fear witch-craft than to
denounce it. Also (and it concerns my tale) the three years which
followed the stranding of the _Saint Andrew_ were remarkable fo