and shaking his head.  Ho! ho! ’twas the comicalest thing I ever saw.  And when Giles came up he explained it all.  Giles had gone down deeper than any of them, and waited for the others on a ledge in the cavern; and just when the bridegroom reached it, Giles seized him by the leg, and said—­’Your soul is mine’—­ho! ho!  ’Your soul is mine,’ said Giles—­and the bridegroom uttered only the loud, long scream we had all heard, and stood and shook and trembled.  ’Twas a rare feat; and if you had come down last year”—­he added, turning to Jane—­“you would have seen the bridegroom going from door to door, followed by all the boys in the village—­he never recovered.  There he went, shake, shaking his head—­and gape gaping with his mouth.  “Twas good sport to teaze him.  I’ve set my dogs on him myself; but he never took the least notice.  ’Twas a good trick—­I never knew better.”

“And the bride?” enquired Jane.

“Oh, she died in a week or two after the adventure!  A silly hussy—­I wished to marry her, by the left hand, to my forester, but she kept on moping and looking at the idiotical bridegroom, and died—­a poor fool.”

“Ah! we’ve grown dull since those merry times,” said Hasket of Norland, looking, round the empty hall, and then towards Reginald, as if reproaching him with the absence of the ancient joviality.  “There were three men killed at my marriage—­in fair give and take fight—­in the hall, at the wedding supper.  There is the mark of blood on the floor yet.”

“I lost my eye at the celebration of a christening,” said Sir Bryan de Barreilles.  “My uncle of Malmescott pushed it in with the handle of his dagger.”

“I got this wound on my forehead at a feast after a funeral,” said Hasket of Norland.  “I quarreled with Morley Poyntz, and he cut my eyebrow with an axe.  ’Twas a merry party in spite of that.”

“The Parson of Pynsent jumped on my face at a festival in honour of the birth of Sir Ranulph Berlingcourt’s heir,” said Maulerer of Phascald.  “I had been knocked on the floor by the Archdeacon of Warleileigh, and the Parson of Pynsent trode on my nose.  He was the biggest man in Yorkshire, and squeezed my nose out of sight—­a rare jovial companion, was the Parson of Pynsent, and many is the joke we have had about the weight of his foot.  Ah! we have no fun now—­no fighting, no grinning through a horse-collar, no roasting before a fire, no singing”—­

“Yes,” said Reginald, “we have Phil Lorimer.”

“Let him come—­let us hear him,” said some of the party.

“I hate songs,” said Dr Howlet; “and think all ballads should be burned.”

“And the writers of them, too,” added Mr Peeper, with a fierce glance towards the fireplace, from which Phil Lorimer emerged.

“Oh no!  I think songs an innocent diversion,” said Mr Lutter, “and softening to the heart.  Sit near me, Mr Lorimer.”

“Make a face, Phil,” cried the knight; “I would rather see a grin than hear your ballad.”