d, they chanted,--

"Come, kiss me, my darling,
Warm kisses I trade for;
Wine, music, and kisses
What else was life made for?"

With some difficulty, and with a disgust which was not altogether
without a superstitious fear of the strange words and the outlandish
appearance of these loathsome Delilahs, Marmaduke broke from the ring
with his new charge; and in a few moments the Nevile and the maiden
found themselves, unmolested and unpursued, in a deserted quarter of
the ground; but still the scream of the timbrel-girls, as they hurried,
wheeling and dancing, into the distance, was borne ominously to the
young man's ear. "Ha, ha! the witch and her lover! Foul is fair! foul is
fair! Shadow to goblin, goblin to shadow,--and the devil will have his
own!"

"And what mischance, my poor girl," asked the Nevile, soothingly,
"brought thee into such evil company?"

"I know not, fair sir," said the girl, slowly recovering her self; "but
my father is poor, and I had heard that on these holiday occasions one
who had some slight skill on the gittern might win a few groats from the
courtesy of the bystanders. So I stole out with my serving-woman,
and had already got more than I dared hope, when those wicked
timbrel-players came round me, and accused me of taking the money from
them. And then they called an officer of the ground, who asked me my
name and holding; so when I answered, they called my father a wizard,
and the man broke my poor gittern,--see!"--and she held it up, with
innocent sorrow in her eyes, yet a half-smile on her lips,--"and they
soon drove poor old Madge from my side, and I knew no more till you,
worshipful sir, took pity on me."

"But why," asked the Nevile, "did they give to your father so unholy a
name?"

"Alas, sir! he is a great scholar, who has spent his means in studying
what he says will one day be of good to the people."

"Humph!" said Marmaduke, who had all the superstitions of his time,
who looked upon a scholar, unless in the Church, with mingled awe and
abhorrence, and who, therefore, was but ill-satisfied with the girl's
artless answer,

"Humph! your father--but--" checking what he was about, perhaps harshly,
to say, as he caught the bright eyes and arch, intelligent face lifted
to his own--"but it is hard to punish the child for the father's
errors."

"Errors, sir!" repeated the damsel, proudly, and with a slight disdain
in her face and voice. "But yes, wisdom is e