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But the silence in that room became itself a tapestry of obscure figures that lifted and sank, sank and lifted, each one of those three minds offering its own secret pattern to the occult weaving of that pregnant moment.

The girl alone, woman-like, was aware of the flowingness of time. For the others time was static. For Geard it was a static Eternal, with that wind-shaken piece of old tapestry sinking down with all three of them into other dimensions. For Lord P. it was a static Superficial, with the tension stretched taut, like the leash of a straining dog.

But to the girl, as she held ajar that heavy oaken door, keeping the wild wind out and yet not keeping it quite out, there came just then an exultant feeling of lovely, continuous flowingness. “How strong and mysterious men are,” she thought to herself. "But oh, I'm glad Fm not a man. Ned isn't a man either. And what a good thing he Isn*t Ned's only a boy. He couldn't manage these strong mysterious men like I can.''

It was the Marquis who made the gesture that broke the spell; but even he did not speak in order to do it. He made a sign to his daughter to go ahead and he made a sign to Geard to follow her. He himself followed with his hand over the candle-flame; and indeed it was necessary for him to give the door a vicious kick with his foot to close it before he could cross the covered stone-way after them, and enter King Mark's death-chamber. This they entered by a similar door to the one he had closed and he managed to get the candle safe into the great empty place without letting the wind annihilate its tender flame.

Once inside King Mark's room and the little door shut behind him, Lord P. laid the candle down on a vast piece of furniture that looked like a long refectory table in a monastery in South Russia, and, returning to the door through which they had come, closed it with unnecessary violence.

The young girl ran forward nowr to the hearth-fire which was burning very badly. Huge clouds of smoke kept issuing from it; clouds that rolled across the room and mounted up among the high rafters. Mr. Geard watched her intently for a second as she bent down to select a few more inflammable billets of wood to throw in, on the top of the ones that were smouldering so slowTly and unsatisfactorily there. With the smoke rising up in wisps and sddies around her, her figure took on an almost unearthly waver-ingness; as if she had been a sylph of the elements, a Being that was taking refuge from the wind-demon outside, in the arms of the fire-demon inside.

He then glanced at the couch that Will Zoyland had carried up for him. It was just a boy-scout camp-bed; but they had covered it with a vast, ancient coverlet, like the one that covered Lady Rachel's bed, only this was of a dark purplish colour; and while it had upon it, in faded embroidery, the falcon clutching the sword, an ugly rent in it had rendered the bird headless.

Mr. Geard moved slowly to the fireplace; but he began to cough as the smoke got into his throat.

“There!” cried the girl with a deep breath, prodding the smouldering logs with a thick iron rod, hooked at the end, which looked as if it had served for this purpose in days when iron had only just begun to be used. She let this Homeric utensil fall with a clatter on the stone coping of the hearth.

“If the smoke makes you cough when you're in bed,” she said, while a darting red flame lit up her face, “you can lug your couch under the window and leave the window open. That's what / do when my fire smokes. These old chimneys always smoke when they're first lit.” She paused and a spasm of intense concern puckered her brow.

“You don't suppose there were any swallows' nests in the chimney, do you?” she asked.

Her mouth remained open after the words left and her eyes grew round.

The Marquis, who had been fumbling at the latches of one of the windows, got it open now, and as he got it open the wind came in with such a wild rush that he jumped back in dismay. Lady Rachel observed this occurrence with childish interest; and in her fit of momentary nervousness, being wrought up by her anxiety over the possibility of nests in the chimney, she forgot her good breeding and laughed aloud. Her laughter must have been the final issue of a long series of suppressed days; for it burst out through the smoke with the quivering ring of something hysterical.

Through the brain of Mr. Geard there rushed like a frantic swallow* beating its wings to escape, the word “\Ximeue”: and with this word, the original of the name Vivian, a spasm o£ mingled emotions, sweet and troubling.

But the Marquis was really annoyed now. That there should have arisen all this unusual fuss o\?r his old friend Johnny Geard of Montacute was in itself not a little inappropriate. But, after all, he himself had been responsible for it. But the Bastard's words, though rejected at the time, had already begun to work on the subtle old statesman's mind: and he felt as if there was something in the air in King Mark's chamber that night which was unsuitable, incongruous, and out of control. That hysterical note in his daughter's laugh, when the inrush of wind made him leap back, '“taunted” his mind, as they say in Somerset. He bit his underlip as he pushed the casement to again with both his hands and clicked the two iron latches.

"Women and------*? he muttered under his breath impatiently.

He meant to say “women and conjurers/' but instead of ”conjurers,“ the lips within the lips, which people use when they are obsessed in this curious way, uttered the words—”Caer Sidf; words which an eccentric Oxford scholar, when drunk enough to talk freely to him. had once repeated in his ears with tipsy reiteration.

The Mayor of Glastonbury had himself drawn back from that childish laughing-fit; and coughing quite uncomfortably now from the acrid smoke he had swallowed, sat himself down on his scout bed. But this bed began so to creak and groan under his weight that he turred to his host and said peevishly, “Mr. Zoy-land's not been setting a booby-trap for me, I hope?”

“YouYe not won your bet yet, Geard/' returned the Marquis laconically. ”You understand, I suppose, quite clearly,“ he went on, taking his daughter by the arm and leading her to a different door from the one they had entered by, ”that no one has managed to sleep in this room? Some mediaeval clerk, called Blehis or Bleheris, wrote his histories here, they tell me; but he wouldn't sleep up here."

But Mr. Geard, rising from his creaking bed, dismissed with a wave of his plump hand this nervousness of Messire Bleheris.

Placidly he bowed good-night to them both, and uas apparently onlv anxious to get rid of them.

The Marquis, however, with his daughter clinging to his arm. her white face and dark eyes looking wild and scared in the candlelight, was seized with the devil's own malice.

'T met a crazy Oxford scholar, Geard,“ he said, ”not so Ions: ago; who told me that he'd sooner commit murder than sleep in this old place. He said that Merlin------"

“Stop, Father; stop! How can you be so cruel?” cried Lady Rachel, actually clapping her free hand over the man*s sneering mouth.

“Hee! Hee! Hee!” chuckled my Lord. “You wonrt have won your bet with Will, your Worship, till Bellamy lets you out in the morning! I'm to lock you in, Geard, I hope you understand? And of course the turret-room will be bolted. They say that a man, in the time of Edward the Fourth, spent the whole night out there, on the Bridge of Sighs; and another fellow, only a hundred years ago, was found------” but the girl pulled him hastily and indignantly through the door.

“Good-night, Mr. Geard!” she called out, while the huge mass of oaken boards, bound with hand-wrought iron, groaned as it closed.

Bloody Johnny heard the taint metallic clang, muffled and muted, of the bolts being thrust into place. Then there ensued a tremendous silence. He sat down again on his creaking scout bed and surveyed King Mark's chamber. The tall candle, burning steadily and brightly now on the refectory table, and the red flames that were coming from a pile of wood on the hearth, served to illumine the vast, shadowy expanse. The place wTas like the interior of an early Norman church and it seemed to the Mayor of Glastonbury that upon many of the enormous rafters above his head there wTere obscure patches and blotches of what must once have been painted scrolls. He walked to one of the arched windows and gazed out into the night. It was too dark to see more than the faintest outlines of the trees beneath him, hut at one spot in the sky the wild-tossed racks of swift-blown clouds had thinned a little, revealing a dim moon that looked sick and giddy; as if she also, even she. were being blown, like a great pale leaf. I efore this devilish wind.

The chamber was certainly clean. The Marquis had not deceived him on that point at any rale. He hesitated a minute or two; and then, quietly and deliberately, took off his coat, waistcoat, shirt and trousers. He experienced, as he always did, a vague, humorous distaste for his plump, unathletic body, as he looked down upon his ungainly legs, encased in grotesque woolen drawers, and upon his protruding belly, like the paunch of a figure upon a beer mug. in its soft, tight-fitting vest.

He walked to the refectory table and took up the candle, placing: it on the floor bv his bedside. He went across to the chair where he had laid his clothes and took from his coat pocket a box of mutches which he placed on the floor by the side of the candle. Then, with heavy deliberation he got down upon his knees by the side of that ridiculous little couch, draped in its ragged armorial coverlet and shutting his eyes tight and letting his clasped hands rest on his stomach, which at that moment resembled the belly of a wooden Punchinello, he proceeded to murmur his usual evening prayer.

This was a singular one, in that it was addressed to the air on the other side of his bed.

“Master be with me,” prayed Bloody Johnny, “Master be with me! Give me strength to change the whole course of human history upon earth! Give me strength to make Glastonbury the centre of a completely new life! Master be with me! Be with me now and forever, by thy most precious Blood!”

The image he evoked in his imagination did not resemble in the least degree the tortured Figure of Pain worshipped by Sam Dekker, and it did not fade away till he got himself slowly into bed. He did this most carefully and gingerly and though the little couch shivered and creaked lamentably under his weight, it did not let him down. His feet, however, protruded under the coverlet, like the feet of a corpse under a purple pall, almost six inches beyond the end of the bed. He then bent down, picked up the candle, blew it out, and replaced it upon the floor. ' He lay flat now upon the bed ... on his broad back ... his massive skull on the soft white pillow. With his hands he pulled up the heraldic coverlet, till it was thickly disposed heneath his chin. He tucked its heavy folds tight about his shoulders, being totally unable to cope with the smooth compactness in which Mrs. Bellamy had so trimly turned back the sheet over the stiff blankets.

His eyes watched the flickering firelight as it touched with warm, rosy reflections the huge dark rafters and the curved oaken supports of the baronial roof.

A pleasant aromatic smell ... the smell of pine wood . . . began now to comfort his senses. The smoke was no longer bitter. It had become fragrant . . -. soothing as incense but more wholesome and natural, almost forest-like,

“Master be with me!” his lips repeated; "be with me now and forever; by thy most precious Blood!'*

Mr. Geard's nature was about ten times as thick as most men's. With the seven or eight under layers of this nature he was entirely absorbed, by day and by night, in his contact with Christ, which resembled, though it was not identical with, the physical embrace of an erotic obsession.

Thus it was only now . * . when things had at last subsided and he was left alone . . . that the two or three upper layers of his thick, phlegmatic nature became really conscious of the difference between going to bed in the chamber where Merlin turned King Mark into dust and going to bed with his faithful Megan. He recalled Lord P.'s malicious “Hee! Hee! Hee!” as he dragged his daughter off and the wild, frightened look—both for him and for the imaginary nests in the chimney—with which Rachel had been pulled through the doorway.

It was not with a very deep layer of his being, perhaps not even with the deepest of the two or three uppermost ones, that he meditated for a while upon the virginal provocativeness of that soft, slim, girlish body, that he had so nearly pulled down upon his knees just now. These sensual thoughts were entirely imre-sisted by Mr, Geard. It was a peculiarity of Bloody Johnny's “thick” nature, that his religious, and what many people might have called his “spiritual” feelings, had absolutely no connection with morality. But although not resisted but rather, on the contrary, encouraged by his conscious will, these amorous stirrings within him were so weak and so languid, as very soon to subside into a delicious drowsiness.

The Mayor of Glastonbury's drowsiness, however, soon ceased to be delicious. No sooner had it become an actual sleep, although a very light sleep, than a fantastic philological problem tormented the dreaming man.

Was it w6Nineue,“ or ”Nimeue,“ that Owen Evans had told him was the original version of the popular ”Vivian“? These three words, ”Nineue,“ uNimeue” and i%Vivian," became for him now three flying herons with outstretched legs. Bloody Johnny's own heart, escaped somehow from his body, wTas the sick, giddy moon that he had caught a glimpse of; and it was this accurst philological problem—which heron was Merlin's paramour—that made this moon-heart of his, as the wild wind tossed it about, so sick, so yellow, so dizzy.

He suddenly awoke into full consciousness with a violent start. He had heard a voice . . . Oh, it was unmistakably real! It wasn?t in his dream at all! . . . which cried out from beside the hearth. “Xineue! Nineue!” He listened now, fully awake and with a heart that was most assuredly safe back where it belonged, for it was pounding like a clock with broken machinery.

How the wind was howling! Never had he heard such a wind! It was a sheer, simple, childish terror that Mark Moor Court was going to be blown down that night, which was making his heart beat in this way. Mr. Geard kept telling himself just this. “It's the wind,” he repeated firmly and emphatically. “It's the wind that's making my heart beat!”