There, upon the little island, are the castle-ruins, now converted
into a useful bone-mill. "And the lady?--is that she?"

It was only the miller's daughter, fresh from a boarding-school,
gardening in a broad straw-hat.

"At least," said Claude, "she is tending far prettier flowers than
ever the lady saw; while the lady herself, instead of weaving and
dreaming, is reading Miss Young's novels, and becoming all the wiser
thereby, and teaching poor children in Hemmelford National School."

"And where is her fairy knight," asked Stangrave, "whom one half hopes
to see riding down from that grand old house which sulks there
above among the beech-woods as if frowning on all the change and
civilisation below!"

"You do old Sidricstone injustice. Vieuxbois descends from thence,
now-a-days, to lecture at mechanics' institutes, instead of the fairy
knight, toiling along in the blazing summer weather, sweating in
burning metal, like poor Perillus in his own bull."

"Then the fairy knight is extinct in England!" asked Stangrave,
smiling.

"No man less; only he (not Vieuxbois, but his younger brother) has
found a wide-awake cooler than an iron kettle, and travels by rail
when he is at home; and when he was in the Crimea, rode a shaggy pony,
and smoked cavendish all through the battle of Inkermann."

"He showed himself the old Sir Lancelot there," said Stangrave,