It was a glorious breezy November morning; the sturdy oaks alone held on to the last brown remnants of their summer finery; all the rest of the trees in the vast sheets of wood which clothed the lower parts of the downs overhanging Ravenshoe, had changed the bright colours of autumn for the duller, but not less beautiful, browns and purples of winter. Below, in the park, the deer were feeding among the yellow fern brakes, and the rabbits were basking and hopping in the narrow patches of slanting sunlight, which streamed through the leaf-less trees. Aloft, on the hill, the valiant blackcock led out his wives and family from the whortle-grown rocks, to flaunt his plumage in the warmest corner beneath the Tor.

And the Tors, too, how they hung aloft above the brown heather, which was relieved here and there by patches of dead, brown, king-fern; hung aloft like brilliant, clearly defined crystals, with such mighty breadths of light and shadow as Sir Charles Barry never could accomplish, though he had Westminster Abbey to look at every day.

Up past a narrow sheep path, where the short grass faded on the one side into feathery broom, and on the other into brown heather and grey stone, under the shadow of the Tor which lay nearest to Ravenshoe, and overhung those dark woods in which we saw Densil just now walking with his old hound; there was grouped, on the morning after the day of Charles’s arrival, a happy party, every one of whom is already known to the reader. Of which circumstance I, the writer, am most especially glad. For I am already as tired of introducing new people to you as my lord chamberlain must be of presenting strangers to Her Majesty at a levee.

Densil first, on a grey cob, looking very old and feeble, straining his eyes up the glen whither Charles, and James, the old keeper, had gone with the greyhounds. At his rein stood William, whom we knew at Oxford. Beside the old man sat Mary on her pony, looking so radiant and happy, that, even if there had been no glorious autumn sun overhead, one glance at her face would have made the dullest landscape in Lancashire look bright. Last, not least, the good Father Tiernay, who sat on his horse, hatless, radiant, scratching his tonsure.

“And so you’re determined to back the blue dog, Miss Mary,” said he.

“I have already betted a pair of gloves with Charles, Mr. Tiernay,” said Mary, “and I will be rash enough to do so with you. Euin is the quickest striker we have ever bred.”

“I kuow it; they all say so,” said the priest; “but come, I must have a bet on the course. I will back Lightning.”

“Lightning is the quicker dog,” said Densil; “but Euin! you will see him lie behind the other dog all the run, and strike the hare at last. Father Mackworth, a good judge of a dog, always backs him against the kennel.”

“Where is Father Mackworth?”

“I don’t know,” said Densil. “I am surprised he is not with us; he is very fond of coursing.”

“His reverence, sir,” said William, “started up the moor about an hour ago. I saw him going.”

“Where was he going to?”

“I can’t say, sir. He took just over past the rocks ion the opposite side of the bottom from Mr. Charles.”

“I wonder,” said Father Tiernay, “whether James will find his friend, the witch, this morning.”

“Ah,” said Densil, “he was telling me about that. I am sure I hope not.”

Father Tiernay was going to langh, but didn’t.

“Do you believe in witches, then, Mr. Ravenshoe?”

“Why, no,” said Densil, stroking his chin thoughtfully, “I suppose not. It don’t seem to me now, as an old man, a more absurd belief than this new electrobiology and table-turning. Charles tells me that they use magic crystals at Oxford, and even claim to have raised the devil himself in Merton; which, at this time of day, seems rather like reverting to first principles.

But I am not sure I believe in any of it. I only know that, if any poor old woman has sold herself to Satan, and taken it into her head to transform herself into a black hare, my greyhounds won’t light upon her. She must have made such a deuced hard bargain that I shouldn’t like to cheat her out of any of the small space left her between this and, and — thingamy.”

William, as a privileged servant, took the liberty of remarking that old Mrs. Jewel didn’t seem to have been anything like a match for Satan in the way of a bargain, for she had had hard times of it seven years before she died. From which —

Father Tiernay deduced the moral lesson, that that sort of thing didn’t pay; and —

Mary said she didn’t believe a word of such rubbish, for old Mrs. Jewel was as nice an old body as ever was seen, and had worked hard for her living, until her strength failed, and her son went down in one of the herring-boats.

Densil said that his little bird was too positive. There was the witch of Endor, for instance —

Father Tiernay, who had been straining his eyes and attention at the movements of Charles and the greyhounds, and had only caught the last word, said with remarkable emphasis and distinctness —

“A broomstick of the Witch of Endor, Well shod wi’ brass,” and then looked at Densil as though he had helped him out of a difficulty, and wanted to be thanked. Densil continued without noticing him —

“There was the Witch of Endor. And ‘ thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.’ If there weren’t such things as witches, you know, St. Paul wouldn’t have said that.”

“I don’t think it was St. Paul, papa, was it?” said Mary.

“It was one of them, my love; and, for that matter, I consider St. Peter quite as good as St. Paul, if not better. St. Peter was always in trouble, I know; but he was the only one who struck a blow for the good cause, all honour to him. Let me see, he married St. Veronica, didn’t he?”

“Marry St. Veronica, virgin and martyr?” said the priest, aghast. “My good sir, you are really talking at random.”

“Ah, well, I may be wrong; she was virgin, but she was no martyr.”

“St. Veronica,” said Father Tiernay, dogmatically, and somewhat sulkily, “was martyred under Tiberius; no less than that.”

“I bet you what you like of it,” cried Densil, “she died —”

But what was Densil’s opinion about the last days of St. Veronica will for ever remain a mystery; for at this moment there came a “See, HO!” from Charles; in the next............