inepins! Faith,
neighbours, to say truth, and shame the devil, I did not like the sound
of it above half."

"If I thought the round-headed rogues did it in scorn of us," said
Dick Wildblood of the Dale, "I would cudgel their psalmody out of their
peasantly throats with this very truncheon;" a motion which, being
seconded by old Roger Raine, the drunken tapster of the Peveril Arms in
the village, might have brought on a general battle, but that Sir Jasper
forbade the feud.

"We'll have no ranting, Dick," said the old Knight to the young
Franklin; "adad, man, we'll have none, for three reasons: first, because
it would be ungentle to Lady Peveril; then, because it is against
the King's peace; and, lastly, Dick, because if we did set on the
psalm-singing knaves, thou mightest come by the worst, my boy, as has
chanced to thee before."

"Who, I! Sir Jasper?" answered Dick--"I come by the worst!--I'll be
d--d if it ever happened but in that accursed lane, where we had no
more flank, front, or rear, than if we had been so many herrings in a
barrel."

"That was the reason, I fancy," answered Sir Jasper, "that you, to mend
the matter, scrambled into the hedge, and stuck there, horse and man,
till I beat thee through it with my leading-staff; and then, instead of
charging to the front, you went right-about, and away as fast as your
feet would carry you."

This reminiscence produced a laugh at Dick's expense, who was known, or
at least suspected, to have more tongue in his head than mettle in
his bosom. And this sort of rallying on the part of the Knight having
fortunately abated the resentment which had begun to awaken in the
breasts of the royalist cavalcade, farther cause for offence was
removed, by the sudden ceasing of the sounds which they had been
disposed to interpret into those of premeditated insult.

This was owing to the arrival of the Puritans at the bottom of the large
and wide breach, which had been formerly made in the wall of the Castle
by their victorious cannon. The sight of its gaping heaps of rubbish,
and disjointed masses of building, up which slowly winded a narrow and
steep path, such as is made amongst ancient ruins by the rare passage of
those who occasionally visit them, was calculated, when contrasted with
the grey and solid massiveness of the towers and curtains which yet
stood uninjured, to remind them of their victory over the stronghold of
their enemies, and how they had bound nobles and prin