that, though she had presented him each year since their marriage with a
child, after nine years had passed none had yet been sons, and, as he was
bitterly at odds with his next of kin, he considered each of his
offspring an ill turn done him.

He spent but little time in her society, for she was a poor, gentle
creature of no spirit, who found little happiness in her lot, since her
lord treated her with scant civility, and her children one after another
sickened and died in their infancy until but two were left. He scarce
remembered her existence when he did not see her face, and he was
certainly not thinking of her this morning, having other things in view,
and yet it so fell out that, while a groom was shortening a stirrup and
being sworn at for his awkwardness, he by accident cast his eye upward to
a chamber window peering out of the thick ivy on the stone. Doing so he
saw an old woman draw back the curtain and look down upon him as if
searching for him with a purpose.

He uttered an exclamation of anger.

"Damnation! Mother Posset again," he said. "What does she there, old
frump?"

The curtain fell and the woman disappeared, but in a few minutes more an
unheard-of thing happened--among the servants in the hall, the same old
woman appeared making her way with a hurried fretfulness, and she
descended haltingly the stone steps and came to his side where he sat on
his black horse.

"The Devil!" he exclaimed--"what are you here for? 'Tis not time for
another wench upstairs, surely?"