Equally curious is the old tradition told of Lynton Castle, of which not a stone remains, although, once upon a time, it was as stately a stronghold as ever echoed to the clash of knightly arms.  One evening there came to its gates a monk, who in the name of the Holy Virgin asked alms, but the lady of the Castle liked not his gloomy brow, and bade him begone.  Resenting such treatment, the monk drew up his well-knit frame, and vowed:—­“All that is thine shall be mine, until in the porch of the holy church, a lady and a child shall stand and beckon.”

Little heed was taken of these ominous words, and as years passed by a baron succeeded to the Lynton estates, whose greed was such that he dared to lay his sacrilegious hand even upon holy treasures.  But as he sate among his gold, the black monk entered, and summoned him to his fearful audit; and his servants, aroused by his screams, found only a lifeless corpse.  This was considered retribution for his sins of the past, and his son, taking warning, girded on his sword, and in Palestine did doughty deeds against the Saracen.  By his side was constantly seen the mysterious Black Monk—­his friend and guide—­but “at length the wine-cup and the smiles of lewd women lured him from the path of right.”  After a time the knight returned to Devonshire, “and lo, on the happy Sabbath morning, the chimes of the church-bells flung out their silver music on the air, and the memories of an innocent childhood woke up instantly in his sorrowing heart.”  In vain the Black Monk sought to beguile him from the holy fane, and whispered to him of bright eyes and a distant bower.  He paused only for a moment.  In the shadow of the porch stood the luminous forms of his mother and sister, who lifted up their spirit hands, and beckoned.  The knight tore himself from the Black Monk’s grasp and rushed towards them, exclaiming, “I come!  I come!  Mother, sister, I am saved!  O, Heaven, have pity on me!” The story adds that the three were borne up in a radiant cloud, but “the Black Monk leapt headlong into the depths of the abyss beneath, and the castle fell to pieces with a sudden crash, and where its towers had soared statelily into the sunlit air was now outspread the very desolation—­the valley of the rocks—­” and thus the vow was accomplished, all that remains nowadays to remind the visitor of that stately castle and its surroundings being a lonely glen in the valley of rocks where a party of marauders, it is said, were once overtaken and slaughtered.

In some cases churches have been built in performance of vows, and at the Tichborne Trial one of the witnesses deposed how Sir Edward Doughty made a vow, when his son was ill, that if the child recovered he would build a church at Poole.  Contrary to all expectation, the child “did recover most miraculously, for it had been ill beyond all hope, and Sir Edward built a church at Poole, and there it stands until this day.”  There are numerous stories of the