love of wonders which most young men have, but fear kept them back.
Within the memory of man, however, some had entered, and, so men said,
were never seen on earth again; but my father said that the tales told
concerning such, very far from deterring him (then quite a youth) from
the quest of this cavern, made him all the more earnestly long to go; so
that one day in his fear, my grandfather, to prevent him, stabbed him in
the shoulder, so that he was obliged to keep his bed for long; and
somehow he never went, and died at last without ever having seen the
inside of the cavern.

"My father told me many wondrous tales about the place, whereof for a
long time I have been able to remember nothing; yet, by some means or
another, a certain story has grown up in my heart, which I will tell you
something of; a story which no living creature ever told me, though I do
not remember the time when I knew it not. Yes, I will tell you some of
it, not all perhaps, but as much as I am allowed to tell."

The man stopped and pondered awhile, leaning over the fire where the
flames slept under the caked coal: he was an old man, and his hair was
quite white. He spoke again presently. "And I have fancied sometimes,
that in some way, how I know not, I am mixed up with the strange story I
am going to tell you." Again he ceased, and gazed at the fire, bending
his head down till his beard touched his knees; then, rousing himself,
said in a changed voice (for he had been speaking dreamily hitherto):
"That strange-looking old house that you all know, with the limes and yew-
trees before it, and the double line of very old yew-trees leading up
from the gateway-tower to the porch--you know how no one will live there
now because it is so eerie, and how even that bold bad lord that would
come there, with his turbulent followers, was driven out in shame and
disgrace by invisible agency. Well, in times past there dwelt in that