and how even that bold bad lord that would come there, with his turbulent followers, was driven out in shame and disgrace by invisible agency.  Well, in times past there dwelt in that house an old grey man, who was lord of that estate, his only daughter, and a young man, a kind of distant cousin of the house, whom the lord had brought up from a boy, as he was the orphan of a kinsman who had fallen in combat in his quarrel.  Now, as the young knight and the young lady were both beautiful and brave, and loved beauty and good things ardently, it was natural enough that they should discover as they grew up that they were in love with one another; and afterwards, as they went on loving one another, it was, alas! not unnatural that they should sometimes have half-quarrels, very few and far between indeed, and slight to lookers-on, even while they lasted, but nevertheless intensely bitter and unhappy to the principal parties thereto.  I suppose their love then, whatever it has grown to since, was not so all-absorbing as to merge all differences of opinion and feeling, for again there were such differences then.  So, upon a time it happened, just when a great war had arisen, and Lawrence (for that was the knight’s name) was sitting, and thinking of war, and his departure from home; sitting there in a very grave, almost a stern mood, that Ella, his betrothed, came in, gay and sprightly, in a humour that Lawrence often enough could little understand, and this time liked less than ever, yet the bare sight of her made him yearn for her full heart, which he was not to have yet; so he caught her by the hand, and tried to draw her down to him, but she let her hand lie loose in his, and did not answer the pressure in which his heart flowed to hers; then he arose and stood before her, face to face, but she drew back a little, yet he kissed her on the mouth and said, though a rising in his throat almost choked his voice, ‘Ella, are you sorry I am going?’ ‘Yea,’ she said, ’and nay, for you will shout my name among the sword flashes, and you will fight for me.’  ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘for love and duty, dearest.’  ’For duty? ah!  I think, Lawrence, if it were not for me, you would stay at home and watch the clouds, or sit under the linden trees singing dismal love ditties of your own making, dear knight:  truly, if you turn out a great warrior, I too shall live in fame, for I am certainly the making of your desire to fight.’  He let drop his hands from her shoulders, where he had laid them, and said, with a faint flush over his face, ’You wrong me, Ella, for, though I have never wished to fight for the mere love of fighting, and though,’ (and here again he flushed a little) ’and though I am not, I well know, so free of the fear of death as a good man would be, yet for this duty’s sake, which is really a higher love, Ella, love of God, I trust I would risk life, nay honour, even if not willingly, yet cheerfully at least.’  ‘Still duty, duty,’ she said; ’you lay, Lawrence, as many people do, most stress on the