tto, "BEWAR THE BAR." But all these bruins
were of stone, and each one of them kept as still and silent as did
everything else about this strange mansion--except, that is, the
fountain, which, behind him in the court, kept up its noisy splashing.

Feeling, somehow, vaguely uncomfortable, Edward Waverley crossed the
court into a garden, green and pleasant, but to the full as solitary as
the castle court. Here again he found more bears, all sitting up in rows
on their haunches, on parapets and along terraces, as if engaged in
looking at the view. He wandered up and down, searching for some one to
whom to speak, and had almost made up his mind that he had found a real
enchanted Castle of Silence, when in the distance he saw a figure
approaching up one of the green walks. There was something uncouth and
strange about the way the newcomer kept waving his hands over his
head--then, for no apparent reason, flapping them across his breast like
a groom on a frosty day, hopping all the time first on one foot and then
on the other. Tiring of this way of getting over the ground, he would
advance by standing leaps, keeping both feet together. The only thing he
seemed quite incapable of doing was to use his feet, one after the
other, as ordinary people do when they are walking. Indeed, this strange
guardian of the enchanted castle of Bradwardine looked like a gnome or
fairy dwarf. For he was clad in an old-fashioned dress of grey, slashed
with scarlet. On his legs were scarlet stockings and on his head a
scarlet cap, which in its turn was surmounted by a turkey's feather.

He came along dancing and singing in jerks and snatches, till, suddenly
looking up from the ground, he saw Edward. In an instant his red cap was
off, and he was bowing and saluting, and again saluting and bowing,
with, if possible, still more extravagant gestures than before. Edward
asked this curious creature if the Baron Bradwardine were at home, and
what was his astonishment to be instantly answered in rhyme:

"The Knight's to the mountain
His bugle to wind;
The Lady's to greenwood
Her garland to bind.
The bower of Burd Ellen
Has moss on the floor,
That the step of Lord William,
Be silent and sure."

This was impressive enough, surely; but, after all, it did not tell
young Captain what he wanted to know. So he continued to question the
strange wight, and finally, after eliciting