vellers as they passed. The clerk began a low chant, humming and
whistling by turns: this gradually grew more audible, until the full
burst of the "_Miserere_" commenced, richly adorned with his own
original quavers. So enamoured was he of his qualifications in this
respect that he was fairly getting through high mass, when, midway in a
ravishing "_Benedictus_" he made a sudden halt.

"What is that creeping behind the bushes there?" inquired he, in a sort
of half-whisper to his companion. De Poininges looked in the direction
pointed out, and thought he saw something, dark and mysterious, moving
between the boughs on his left. He stopped, but the object, whatever its
nature, had disappeared.

Sore alarmed was the timid chorister; but though his melodies had
ceased, a plentiful supply of credos and paternosters were at hand to
supply their place. Crossing himself with a great show of sanctity, he
moved on with much caution, his deep hoarse voice having subsided into a
husky and abrupt whisper, often interrupted when objects the most
trivial arrested his glance and aroused his suspicions.

They arrived without molestation at an enclosure about a mile distant
from the priory. Here they alighted, leaving the horses to the care of
their attendants. Turning the angle made by a low wall, they observed a
footpath, which the clerk pointed out as the shortest and most
convenient course to their destination. Soon the east end of the priory
chapel was visible, basking in the broad light of the harvest moon, then
riding up full and unclouded towards her zenith. Buttress and oriel were
weltering in her beam, and the feathery pinnacles sprang out sharp and
clear into the blue sky. The shadows were thrown back in masses deep and
unbroken, more huge in proportion to the unknown depths through which
the eye could not penetrate.

"There--again! 'Tis a footstep on our track!" said the clerk, abruptly
breaking upon the reverie of his companion.

"'Tis but the tread of the roused deer; man's bolder footstep falls not
so lightly," was the reply; but this did not quiet the apprehensions of
the querist, whose terrors were again stealing upon him. Their path was
up a little glen, down which the mill-stream, now released from its
daily toil, brawled happily along, as if rejoicing in its freedom. Near
the mill, on a point of land formed by an abrupt bend of the stream,
stood the storehouse or grange. It was an ample structure, serving at
times