dropping tears. He tenderly kissed the tears away.




CHAPTER XIV

"Oh, give to me my gui-l'annee,
I pray you, Monseigneur;
The king's princess doth ride to-day,
And I ride forth with her.
Oh! I will ride the maid beside
Till we come to the sea,
Till my good ship receive my bride,
And she sail far with me.
Oh, donnez-moi ma gui-l'annee,
Monseigneur, je vous prie!"

The singer was perched on a huge broad stone, which, lying athwart other
tall perpendicular stones, made a kind of hut, approached by a pathway of
upright narrow pillars, irregular and crude. Vast must have been the
labour of man's hands to lift the massive table of rock upon the
supporting shafts--relics of an age when they were the only architecture,
the only national monuments; when savage ancestors in lion skins, with
stone weapons, led by white-robed Druid priests, came solemnly here and
left the mistletoe wreath upon these Houses of Death for their adored
warriors.

Even the words sung by Shoreham on the rock carried on the ancient story,
the sacred legend that he who wore in his breast this mistletoe got from