sign but that of silence; and indeed they were still too full of the
importance of unaccustomed authority to fear any contempt for it on
the part of others.

It happened that at this moment Raglan Castle was full of
merry-making upon occasion of the marriage of one of lady Herbert's
waiting-gentlewomen to an officer of the household; and in these
festivities the earl of Worcester and all his guests were taking a
part.

Among the numerous members of the household was one who, from being
a turnspit, had risen, chiefly in virtue of an immovably lugubrious
expression of countenance, to be the earl's fool. From this
peculiarity his fellow-servants had given him the nickname of The
Hangman; but the man himself had chosen the role of a puritan
parson, as affording the best ground-work for the display of a
humour suitable to the expression of countenance with which his
mother had endowed him. That mother was Goody Rees, concerning whom,
as already hinted, strange things were whispered. In the earlier
part of his career the fool had not unfrequently found his mother's
reputation a sufficient shelter from persecution; and indeed there
might have been reason to suppose that it was for her son's sake she
encouraged her own evil repute, a distinction involving considerable
risk, seeing the time had not yet arrived when the disbelief in such
powers was sufficiently advanced for the safety of those reported to
possess them. In her turn, however, she ran a risk somewhat less
than ordinary from the fact that her boy was a domestic in the
family of one whose eldest son, the heir to the earldom, lay under a
similar suspicion; for not a few of the household were far from
satisfied that lord Herbert's known occupations in the Yellow Tower