"It looks a very melancholy place," was the opinion expressed by the holiday folks, "and very fierce and warlike."
"Perhaps that is partly because of the black frowning rock on which it stands," suggested one.
"How very rugged the shore is; and what a quantity of sea-weed," said Ellen Herbert; and, indeed, it was not easy to move over the broken cliffs, since the accumulation of wrack made it dangerous.
"We must go and see the Rumble Churn," said one, who knew what a treat it would be to those who had never seen it.
"It is an immense chasm, four hundred feet in length and fifty in depth," continued the informant.
They regarded it with awe and wonder. The sea came rushing in with a tremendous roar, bursting and boiling into foam, and seeming as if it would leap over the tower, and submerge the hill altogether. It has been said of it—"The breaking of the waves into foam over the extreme points of the rocks, the heavy spray, the noise of the disturbed waters, and the foam whose echo returns through the towers, are most awful and sublime."
Of course, such ruins as those of Northumbria could not exist without having many interesting legends attached to them; and with one of these the student was acquainted, and this he resolved to narrate to the party.
When the young people had been sufficiently awed by looking into Rumble Churn, it was time for them to partake of refreshment and rest.
"Shall I tell you the legend of the Wandering Knight of Dunstanborough Castle?" then asked the student, to which inquiry a chorus of eager voices responded in the affirmative—the girls declaring that to hear it there, among the very ruins, would be most delightful.
"In ages gone by," then began the young man, "a Red Cross Knight, returning from the holy land, sought shelter from the storm beneath the ruined archway of the castle—