he knew would keep him prisoner for ever and a day. There was no good in
resisting. He grew bewildered, and yielded himself passively to his
fate, and emerged from the glen on the platform above; his captor's
knotted old hand still on his arm, and looked round on the tall
mysterious trees, and the gray front of the castle, revealed in the
imperfect moonlight, as upon the scenery of a dream.

The old man who, with thin wiry legs, walked by his side, in a dingy
white coat, and blue facings, and great pewter buttons, with his silver
gray hair escaping from under his battered three-cocked hat; and his
shrewd puckered resolute face, in which the boy could read no promise of
sympathy, showing so white and phantom-like in the moonlight, was, as he
thought, the incarnate ideal of a fairy.

This figure led him in silence under the great arched gateway, and
across the grass-grown court, to the door in the far angle of the
building; and so, in the dark, round and round, up a stone screw stair,
and with a short turn into a large room, with a fire of turf and wood,
burning on its long unused hearth, over which hung a pot, and about it
an old woman with a great wooden spoon was busy. An iron candlestick
supported their solitary candle; and about the floor of the room, as
well as on the table and chairs, lay a litter of all sorts of things;
piles of old faded hangings, boxes, trunks, clothes, pewter-plates, and
cups; and I know not what more.

But what instantly engaged the fearful gaze of the boy were the figures
of two ladies; red drugget cloaks they had on, like the peasant girls of
Munster and Connaught, and the rest of their dress was pretty much in
keeping. But they had the grand air, the refined expression and beauty,
and above all, the serene air of command that belong to people of a