The page began with a low prelude, but was again interrupted.

“Nay, ’tis not thus.  Give me that wild love-ditty thou knowest so well.  I did use to bid thee be silent when thou wouldest have worried mine ears with it.  But in sooth the morning looks so languishing and tender that it constrains the bosom, I verily think, to its own softness.”

The page seemed to throw his whole soul into the wild melody which followed this request.  We give it, with a few verbal alterations, as follows:—­

SONG.

1.

Fair star, that beamest
In my ladye’s bower,
Pale ray, that streamest
In her lonely tower;
Bright cloud, when like the eye of Heaven
Floating in depths of azure light,
Let me but on her beauty gaze
Like ye unchidden.  Day and night
I’d watch, till no intruding rays
Should bless my sight.

2.

Fond breeze, that rovest
Where my ladye strays,
Odours thou lovest
Wafting to her praise;
Lone brook, that with soft music bubblest,
Chaining her soul to harmony;
Let me but round her presence steal
Like ye unseen, a breath I’d be,
Content none other joy to feel
Than circling thee!

“In good sooth, thou canst govern the cadence well.  Thou hast more skill of love than thine age befits.  But, mayhap, ’tis thy vocation, boy.  Hast thou had visitors betimes this morning!”

“None, good master, but Kelly.”

“What of him?”

“Some business that waited your return.  I thought you had knowledge of the matter.”

“Are there any clients astir so early at his chamber, thinkest thou?”

“None, save the rich merchant that dwells hard by, Cornelius Ethelstoun.”

“Cornelius!” repeated the cavalier, in a disturbed and inquiring tone—­“hath he departed?”

“Nay, I heard not his footsteps since I watched the old man tapping warily at the prophet’s door.”

Rodolf hastily replaced his hat, and his short and impatient rap was heard at the seer’s chamber.

It occupied the north-eastern angle of the building, in the gloomiest part of the house; overlooking, on one side, a small courtyard, barricadoed by walls and battlements of stout masonry, along which were ridges of long rank grass waving in all the pride of uncropped luxuriance.  Another window overlooked the dark-flowing Irk, lazily rolling beneath the perpendicular rock on which the college was built—­the very site of the once formidable station of Mancunium, the heart and centre of the Roman power in that vast district.

No answer being rendered to this hasty summons, Rodolf raised the latch, but marvelled not a little when he beheld the room apparently deserted.  Voices were, however, heard in the inner apartment.  Ere he could well draw back the door slowly opened, nor could he avoid hearing the following termination to some weighty conference.

“An hundred broad pieces—­good!  Ere night, thou sayest?”