184
WYLDER'S HJUVD.
cheery little bedroom, when the shutters were closed, and
the fire burning brightly in the grate.
"My good Tainar will read her chapters aloud. I wish
I could enjoy them like you. 1 can only wish. You
must pray for me, Tamar. There is a dreadful image
— and I sometimes think a dreadful being — always near
me. Though the words you read are sad and awful, they
are also sweet, like funeral music a long way off, and they
tranquilize me without making me better, as the harping
of David did the troubled and forsaken King Saul."
So the old nurse mounted her spectacles, glad of the
invitation, and began to read.
"Stop," said Rachel suddenly, as she reached about the
middle of the chapter.
The old woman looked up, with her watery eyes wide
open, and there was a short pause.
"I beg your pardon, dear Tamar, but you must first
tell me that story you used to tell me long ago of Lady
Ringdove, that lived in Epping Forest, to whom the ghost
came and told something she was never to reveal, and who
slowly died of the secret, growing all the time more and
more like the spectre; and besought the priest when she
was dying, that he would have her laid in the abbey vault,
with her mouth open, and her eyes and ears sealed, in to-
ken that her term of slavery was over, that her lips might
now be open, and that her eyes were to see no more the
dreadful sight, nor her ears to hear the frightful words
that used to scare them in her life-time; and then, when-
ever afterwards they opened the door of the vault, the wind
entering in, made such moanings in her hollow mouth, and
declared things so horrible that they built up the door of
the vault, and entered it no more. Let me have the entire
story, just as you used to tell it."
So old Tamar, who knew it was no use disputing a