CHAPTER I.
It was a glorious summer morning in the year of grace 1635, when a boy, aged some ten years, and a pretty fair-haired maiden five years his junior, were lolling in the shade of a gigantic copper-beech, which towered in front of the old manor house known by the name of Combe Abbey. Hugh Travers, the heir and only child of Sir Ralph Travers, was a sturdy, well-grown lad, who bade fair to follow in his father's footsteps as a soldier and a courtier, for even now his manner towards his little cousin, Cecily Wharton, was marked by gentleness and good breeding, and he was ever her protector and guardian in any childish scrapes or difficulties in which they might involve themselves.
Cecily was the orphan daughter of Lady Travers's only sister. The child had lost both her parents soon after her birth by the small-pox, and her aunt had brought her to Combe that she might be trained and educated under her own eyes, and fitted for the position which would be hers when she came of age, for she was no penniless waif, and also that she might be a companion for her own son Hugh. Lady Wharton, though a devoted mother, tempered her devotion with common-sense, and she well knew the temptation to selfishness and egotism which must assail a lad in her Hugh's position were he brought up without companions of his own standing, and amid the society of his elders only. Her plan had so far been marked by success. Hugh's gentle nature had been brought more to the fore by the companionship of the little girl, and her society had taught him that there was the pleasure of others to be thought of as well as his own.
On the morning in question the two young people had been for a long ramble in the park with their dogs, and had returned in time for the midday meal, the summons to which they were awaiting under the beech-tree. As they thus rested, their gaze and their conversation had turned on the old pile of buildings facing them.
"Then Uncle Ralph did not build it," Cecily was saying, in connection with some remark of Hugh's on the weather-beaten appearance of the mansion.
"Uncle Ralph! Indeed, no! Why, Cecily, it was old, very old, before my father was thought of, or, for the matter of that, his father, and grandfather before him."
"Then it must be old! And didn't his father live here?"
"Yes; and his grandfather, too."
"Oh!"—in a puzzled tone from the child, as if her ideas were not equal to going back so far; and then, in a brighter key, consequent on feeling on safer ground, "Then who did build it?"
"The monks."
"What monks?"
"The monks who afterwards lived in it. It was an abbey till Harry the Eighth, of gracious memory, turned them out and gave it to one of my forefathers."
"What did he do that for?"
"Well, I know not for certain. Some say one thing, and some another, but he gave it to one of our forebears, and for that I bless his memory."
"But he was cruel, and killed his wives."
"Some of them; yet I doubt not they deserved it." And then, pointing to two niches or small alcoves high up in the outer wall, and only some ten feet or so below the parapet, "See, Cecily—there is one of the builders of the abbey, Abbot Swincow."
"That figure in the cowl?"
"Yes; and 'tis said he keeps guard over the place to this day, though he has been dead these hundreds of years."
"And is it true?" asked the little girl, turning a look of semi-wonderment and awe on her companion.
"Nay, I know not, save that no harm has befallen the place, or us who live in it, since I can remember."
"Then it is true, I make no doubt," said the easily convinced child. "But who stands in the other little hole?"
"No one now. I have heard father say that there was a figure of a Father Anthony once, but that stem of ivy you see crept up, and, getting into the joints of the stone at the base, loosened them, and in a storm one night it was blown down and broken to pieces."
"And did they never stick the poor man together again?"
"Never. His head now rests beside the fountain basin in the lower garden, and bits of his body and legs are in a heap against yon wall."
"Poor man, poor man! and the ivy is taking his place: one spray is growing right across the opening where he stood."
"I've oft thought I should like to climb up and get in the niche and see what the garden and park look like from there, but the ivy is not strong enough."
"Oh, no, no, Hugh—you must not! You'd be killed; and then what should I do?" And in her eagerness Cecily clasped her cousin's arm.
"Nay, I don't think I shall," replied Hugh, laughing. "I have no hankering for a broken neck; and, besides, you could not come with me, and it would be no sport alone."
"No, don't go. It must be much nicer down here than being like that poor broken man was up there."
"Well, Cecily, I don't feel much like an image just now, for there's the horn for dinner, and I'm hungry. Let us go." And scrambling to their feet the two happy children raced across the grass to the house, and left Abbot Swincow and the empty niche bathed in the midday sunshine.
(To be continued.)
[ABOUT PEGGY SAVILLE.]
By JESSIE MANSERGH (Mrs. G. de Horne Vaizey), Author of "A Girl in Springtime," "Sisters Three," etc.