Ruth had a theory that this suite of rooms on the upper storey of the gatehouse wing had in olden times been occupied by the lord and lady of the ancient mansion; and the notion was probably a correct one, since in no part of the place were traces of such magnificence to be seen as here. Fragments of painted glass glowed in the mullioned windows, showing scraps of monstrous griffin-like heads and scaly tails, and enscrolled letters, of which only one word in one of the upper lights of Ruth's window remained entire—"Loyaulté."

Time and wear had so polished the wood of this chamber's richly-parqueted floor that its smooth surface reflected, like some quiet pool, the tall-backed chairs of tawny and gilt Cordovan leather, ranged stiffly against the walls, and about the long narrow oaken table covered with its faded velvet drapery; and the massive proportions of the huge carved oaken chest, capacious enough to shut in one of the mailed knights, or even portly brown-frocked Abbot Benedict Ogard of Waltham Abbey himself, who smiled, come fair weather come foul, come day come night, so unctuously down on you from his recess beside the loftily-coped fireplace.

Ruth could very well recall the time when the lower portion of the walls of this room had been hung with Flemish tapestry, embroidered with subjects from the Old Testament and early Grecian lore. One winter, however, when King Frost intruded so tyrannically in-doors that people shivered in their beds, Maudlin Sweetapple had stripped down the greater part of this tapestry to make curtains for Ruth's room. If in cutting away the tattered and hopelessly unmendable parts of it, she had patched the stuff together again in such fashion as to leave Solomon in all his glory turning a summersault on the extreme tip of Jonah's whale's nose, and Goliath's gory head frowned grimly from the neck of the Trojan horse, did it not all serve every whit as well for keeping the wind away?

The warder's room.

No doubt the situation of the Warder's Room, cut off as it was so completely from the rest of the house, had first obtained it its ghostly renown; one not likely to dwindle, by the knowledge that its outer door giving on the staircase was always kept locked. This, however, was no more than an ordinary precaution; since the room stood literally in the very portal of the whole house, though time had brought its changes, and various small doors in the new wing now admitted by the wicket the maltster's few visitors and his workpeople to the malt-yard.

A grim greeting.

The master of the house himself did not set foot inside the Warder's Room twice in a year; and when on that May morning, before starting for Nether Hall, Ruth entered it, according to her daily custom, to let a little fresh air and sunshine into its grim silence, she had been startled at perceiving her father standing with folded arms and sombre brows near the hearth, gazing into its cold blackness as if lost in moody thought. On becoming conscious of her presence, however, he had roused up from his abstraction, and with a hurried and absent "Good morrow, child," he turned and went out, locking the door behind him.

CHAPTER V.
HOW MASTER RUMBOLD TOLD LAWRENCE LEE
WHAT THE VERY AIR MIGHT NOT HEAR.

This recollection of the morning, troubles Ruth strangely now, as she sits in the broad window-seat of her own room, her eyes fixed indeed on the fair moon-lit scene before her, but for once seeing nothing of its beauty. Vague fears and suspicions and dread of coming evil weigh down her heart, as one by one she threads together the incidents of this May-day, which was to have been such a golden one. It is all in vain that she laughingly tells herself her father has every right to perambulate his own premises. All in vain she argues that Lawrence Lee may be as sulky as a bear with a sore head, if it gives him any pleasure; and no concern of hers. Certainly not. All the same too, of course, it is to her if a legion of coal-barges come their way, so long as it is not she who stands in Master Sheppard's shoes.