william � will come and with this in her hand she went to the door of the room and out upon the stairs on second thoughts turning back for a moment to put on her husband s hat and cloak � not the one he was daily wearing � that if seen in the twilight she might at a casual glance appear as some lad or on of one of the household women thus she descended a flight of circular a of noble stairs at the bottom of which was a door opening upon the terrace towards the west in the direction of her brother s position her object was to slip out without the seeing her get to the stables arouse one of the and send him ahead of her along the highway with the note to warn her brother of her approach to throw in her lot with his she was still in the shadow of the wall on the west terrace waiting for the to be quite out of the way when her ears were greeted by a voice saying from the adjoining shade � here i be the tones were the tones of a woman lady made no reply and stood close to the wall my lord the voice continued and she could recognize in it the local accent of some girl from the little town of close at hand i be tired of waiting my dear lord i was you would never come i lady flushed hot to her toes how the loves him she said to herself reasoning from the tones of her voice which were plaintive and sweet and tender as a bird s she changed from the home to the wife in one moment she said my lord you told me ten o clock and tis near twelve now continues the other how could ye keep me waiting so if you love me as you said i should have stuck to my lover in the lady parliament troops if it had not been for thee my dear lord there was not the least doubt that lady had been mistaken for her husband by this here was a pretty business here were sly here was here was a precious surprised in the midst her wicked husband whom till this very moment she had ever deemed the soul of good faith � how could he lady retreated to the door in the closed it locked it and ascended one round of the staircase where there was a hole i am not coming i lord despise ye and all your wanton tribe she through the opening and then crept up stairs as firmly rooted in principles as any man in the castle her husband still slept the sleep of the weary well fed and well drunken if not of the just and lady quickly herself without assistance � being indeed supposed by her woman to have retired to rest long ago before lying down she noiselessly locked the door and placed the key under her pillow more than that she got a and creeping up to her lord in great tied the lace in a tight knot to one of his long locks of hair the other end of the lace to the for being tired herself now she feared she might sleep heavily and if her husband should wake this would be a delicate hint that she had discovered all a of noble it is added that to make assurance sure her gentle when she had lain down to rest held her lord s hand in her own during the whole of the night but this is old wives gossip and not what lord thought and said when he awoke the next morning and found himself so strangely is likewise only matter of conjecture though there is no reason to suppose that his rage was great the extent of his as regards the was this much that while halting at a cross road near that day he had with a pretty young woman who seemed nothing and had invited her to the castle terrace after dark � an invitation which he quite forgot on his arrival home the subsequent relations of lord and lady were not again greatly by quarrels so far as is known though the husband s conduct in later life was occasionally eccentric and the of his public career in long exile the siege of the castle was not regularly undertaken till two or three years later than the time i have been describing when lady and all the women therein except the wife of the then governor had been removed to safe distance that memorable siege of fifteen days by and the surrender of the old place on an august evening is matter of history and need not be told by me lady the man of family spoke across to the colonel when the club had done smiling declaring that the story was an absolutely faithful page of history as he had good reason to know his own people having been engaged in that he asked if the colonel had ever heard the equally well though less martial tale of a certain lady who lived in the same century and not a score of miles from the same place the colonel had not heard it nor had anybody except the local historian and the was induced to proceed forthwith dame the eighth i by the man of family in going out of by the low lying road which eventually to the town of you see on the right hand an by towers and more than usually distinguished by the size of its many windows though still of good capacity the building is much reduced from its original grand proportions it has moreover been of the fair estate which once to its lord with the exception of a few acres of immediately around the mansion this was formerly the seat of 