this very spot."

"Why not Andover?" asked his companion; "'tis but six miles, and I am going thither."

"Humph!" said the stranger, in a tone not quite satisfied; "it must be so, if better cannot be found; and yet, my friend, I would fain find some other lodging. Is there no inn hard by, where carriers bait their beasts and fill their bellies, and country-folks carouse on nights of merry-making? or some old hall or goodly castle, where a truckle bed, or one of straw, a nunchion of bread and cheese, and a draught of ale, is not likely to be refused to a traveller with a good coat on his back and long-toed shoes?"

"Oh, ay!" rejoined the first; "of the latter there are many round, but, on my life, it will be difficult to direct you to them. The men of this part have a fondness for crooked ways, and, unless you were the Dædalus who made them, or had some fair dame to guide you by the clue, you might wander about for as many hours as would take you to Winchester."

"Then Andover it must be, I suppose," answered the other; "though, to say sooth, I may there have to pay for a frolic, the score of which might better be reckoned with other men than myself."

"A frolic!" said his companion; "nothing more, my friend?"

"No, on my life!" replied the other; "a scurvy frolic, such as only a fool would commit; but when a man has nothing else to do, he is sure to fall into folly, and I am idle perforce."

"Well, I'll believe you," answered the first, after a moment's thought; "I have, thank Heaven, the gift of credulity, and believe all that men tell me. Come, I will turn back with you, and guide you to a place of rest, though I shall be well laughed at for my pains."

"Not for an act of generous courtesy, surely," said the stranger, quitting the half-jesting tone in which he had hitherto spoken. "If they laugh at you for that, I care not to lodge with them, and will not put your kindness to the test, for I should look for a cold reception."

"Nay, nay, 'tis not for that, they will laugh," rejoined the other, "and perhaps it may jump with my humour to go back, too. If you have committed a folly in a frolic to-night, I have committed one in anger. Come with me, therefore, and, as we go, give me some name by which to call you when we arrive, that I may not have to throw you into my uncle's hall as a keeper with a dead deer; and, moreover, before we go, give me your word that we have no frolics here, for I would not, for much, that any one I brought, should move the old knight's heart with aught but pleasure."

"There is my hand, good youth," replied the stranger, following, as the other turned his horse; "and I never break my word, whatever men say of me, though they tell strange tales. As for my name, people call me Hal of Hadnock; it will do as well as another."

"For the nonce," added his companion, understanding well that it was assumed; "but it matters not. Let us ride on, and the gate shall soon be opened to you; for I do think they will be glad to see me back again, though I may not perchance stay long.

"You seem learned for a countryman," said the traveller, riding on by his side; "but, perchance, I am speaking to a clerk?"

"Good faith, no," replied the first wayfarer; "more soldier than clerk, Hal of Hadnock; as old Robert of Langland says, 'I cannot perfectly my Paternoster, as the priest it singeth, but I can rhyme of Robin Hode and Randof Earl of Chester.' I have cheered my boyhood with many a song and my youth with many a ballad. When lying in the field upon the marches of Wales, I have wiled away many a cold night with the--

or,

and then in the cold blasts of March, I ever found comfort in--

"And good reason, too," said Hal of Hadnock; "I do the same, i'faith; and when wintry winds are blowing, I think ever, that a warmer day may come and all be bright again. Were it not for that, indeed, I might well be cold-hearted."

"Fie, never flinch!" cried his gay companion; "there is but one thing on earth should make a bold man coldhearted."

"And what may that be?" asked the other; "to lose his dinner?"

"No, good life!" exclaimed the first,--"to lose his lady's love."

"Ay, is it there the saddle galls?" said Hal of Hadnock.

"Faith, not a whit," answered his fellow-traveller; "if it did, I should leave off singing. You are wrong in your guess, Master Hal. I may lose my lady, but not my lady's love, or I am much mistaken; and while that stays with me I will both sing and hope."

"'Tis the best comfort," replied Hal of Hadnock, "and generally brings success. But what am I to call you, fair sir? for it mars one's speech to have no name for a companion."

"Now, were not my uncle's house within three miles," said the other, "I would pay you in your own coin, and bid you call me Dick of Andover; for I am fond of secrets, and keep them faithfully, except when they are likely to be found out; but such being the case now, you must call me Richard of Woodville, if you would have my friends know you mean a poor squire who has ever sought the places where hard blows are plenty; but who missed his spurs at Bramham Moor by being sent by his good friend Sir Thomas Rokeby to bear tidings of Northumberland's incursion to the King. I would fain have staid and carried news of the victory; but, good sooth, Sir Thomas said he could trust me to tell the truth clearly as well as fight, and that, though he could trust the others to fight, he could not find one who would not make the matter either more or less to the King, than it really was. See what bad luck it is to be a plain-spoken fellow."

"Good luck as well as bad," replied Hal of Hadnock; and in such conversation they pursued their way, riding not quite so fast as either had been doing when first they met, and slackening their pace to a walk, when, about half a mile farther forward, they quitted the high road and took to the narrow lanes of the country, which, as the reader may easily conceive, were not quite as good for travelling in those days, as even at present, when in truth they are often bad enough. They soon issued forth, however, upon a more open track, where the river again ran along by the roadside, sheltered here and there by copses which occasionally rose from the very brink; and, just as they regained it, the moon appearing over the low banks that fell crossing each other over its course, poured, from beneath the fringe of heavy clouds that canopied the sky above, her full pale light upon the whole extent of the stream. There was something fine but melancholy in the sight, grave and even grand; and though there were none of those large objects which seem generally necessary to produce the sublime, there was a feeling of vastness given by the broad expanse of shadow overhead, and the long line of glistening brightness below, broken by the thick black masses of brushwood that here and there bent over the flat surface of the water.

"This is fine," said Hal of Hadnock; "I love such night scenes with the solitary moon and the deep woods and the gleaming river--ay, even the dark clouds themselves. They are to me like a king's fate, where so many heavy things brood over him, so many black and impenetrable things surround him, and where yet often