“The knight groped diligently in the castle ditch for many days; but light fishes make light nets, as we say.  There was no corpse to be found, and many an Ave Maria has been said for her soul.”

“What cause was then assigned for this fearful deed?”

“’Tis said she was in love, and went mad!  I wot she was ever sighing and rambling about the house, and would seldom venture out alone, looking as though she were in jeopardy, and dreaded some hidden danger.”

“Thinkest thou, friend, that some hidden danger might not be the cause; and this show of her drowning but a feint or device that should turn aside the current of their inquiry?”

The clerk looked anxious and uneasy, sore puzzled, as it might seem, to shape out an answer.  At length, finding that the question could not be evaded, he proceeded with much hesitation as follows:—­

“Safe as my Lord Cardinal at his prayers—­she is dead though; for I heard her wraith wailing and shrieking up the woods that night as I stood in the priory close.  It seemed like, as it were, making its way through the air from Lathom, for the smell of consecration, I reckon.”

“Go on,” said De Poininges, whose wits were shrewdly beginning to gather intelligence from these furtive attempts at concealment.

“Well-a-day,” continued the clerk, draining an ample potation, “I’ve heard strange noises thereabout; and the big building there, men say, is haunted by the ghost.”

“Where is the building thou speakest of?”

“The large granary beyond the postern leading from the prior’s house towards the mill.  I have not passed thereby since St Mark’s vigil, and then it came.”  Here he looked round, stealing a whisper across the bench—­“I heard it:  there was a moaning and a singing by turns; but the wind was loud, so that I could scarcely hear, though when I spake of it to old Geoffrey the gardener, he said the prior had laid a ghost, and it was kept there upon prayer and penance for a long season.  Now, stranger, thou mayest guess it was no fault of mine if from this hour I passed the granary after sunset.  The ghost and I have ever kept ourselves pretty far apart.”

“Canst show me this same ghostly dungeon?”

“Ay, can I, in broad daylight; but”—.

“Peradventure thou canst show me the path, or the clue to it; and I warrant me the right scent will lie at the end on’t.”

“And pray, good master, wherefore may your curious nose be so mightily set upon this same adventure?” said the clerk, his little red and ferrety eyes peering very provokingly into those of his opposite neighbour.  Now, De Poininges was not for the moment prepared to satisfy this unexpected inquiry, but his presence of mind did not forsake him.  Rightly guessing his friend’s character—­a compound in universal esteem, to wit, fool and knave—­he drew from his pouch a couple of bright ship nobles, then but newly coined, which effectually diverted the prying looks of Thomas le Clerke.