in strictest confidence, went so far as to hazard the opinion that the
lady was not quite "canny"; she might, they thought, quite possibly turn
out to be an imp of the Evil One sent with her gold to wile Bryan's soul
to perdition. The belief was not more fantastic than many another that
prevailed at that day, and later; and the fact that she was never known
to go to mass, nor had been seen to cross the threshold of a sacred
building, lent some weight to it. This was the kind of "clash" that
floated about the countryside.

But assuredly there was this much foundation for talk: Bryan and his
foreign bride were far from happy together. As time went on, their
quarrels, indeed, became notorious. It was whispered that the fount from
which flowed all the trouble was nothing more nor less than that chest
of gold which the bride had brought for dowry. The lady, folk said,
would not surrender it to her husband; no matter how he stormed. _She_
was not of the kind that tamely submits, or cringes before a bully; on
the contrary, she ever gave back as good as she received. Finally,
things came at length to such a pitch, that the lady and her foreign
servants, it was said, at dead of night had secretly dug a great hole
somewhere in the huge vaulted dungeons of the castle, and had there
buried her gold and the rich jewels which now she hated as the cause of
her troubles.

Then, a little later, followed the climax--after violent scenes, Bryan
himself disappeared, as if to show that, the treasure being somewhere
beyond his ken, or out of his reach, he had no further use for the wife.
He might, no doubt, have resorted to poison, or to the knife, in order
to revenge himself; or he might have so made life a burden to her--as is
done sometimes, one is told, even by modern husbands--that she would
have been glad to lick his hand like a whipped spaniel, and to have