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The Governor's lieutenant boarded us in a large canoe, paddled by about a score of blacks. A salute was fired by our ship, and returned from the castle with a degree of splendor quite unexpected; for a portion of the native town, situated beneath the castle-walls, was set on fire by the wad of a cannon, and twenty or thirty houses burnt to the ground.

Whilst watching and directing the men, he kept his ears open for the message, and he heard the herald again recite the terms on which the garrison might surrender, and again the threat to hang every man from the castle-walls if they compelled him to reduce them by force of arms.

Thus, centuries after feudal times are past, we find warriors still gathering under the old castle-walls, and commanded by a feudal lord, just as in the days of the King-Maker, who, no doubt, often mustered his retainers in the same market-place where I beheld this modern regiment.

Observing this, the Knight plied him with his battle-axe more vigorously than before, till he was compelled to seek for safety within his castle-walls; but ere he reached them he let fall from his grasp his huge oak-tree; on which Saint Anthony, redoubling his efforts, smote him so fiercely, that he sunk down on his knees, unable to fly further.

It is guarded by a high wall from the adjoining castle-walls, as if the castle still feared there were something dangerously infectious in the mere propinquity of such heresies. It has had its turn at the sieges that have beset the castle. From the old tower there came a rattling hail when Waller's artillery flashed forth its fire upon the Royalist garrison in the castle.

'Sentimentality puts up infant hands for absolution, said Diana. 'But tell me, Lady Dunstane inquired generally, 'why men are so much happier than women in laughing at their spouses? They are humaner, was one dictum; they are more frivolous, ironically another. 'It warrants them for blowing the bugle-horn of masculine superiority night and morning from the castle-walls, Diana said.

Thus, centuries after feudal times are past, we find warriors still gathering under the old castle-walls, and commanded by a feudal lord, just as in the days of the King-Maker, who, no doubt, often mustered his retainers in the same market-place where I beheld this modern regiment.

And not half a league from the shore was a grand old castle, with a tall tower and many turrets, and broad halls and high battlements; and in the light of the setting sun every thing was as green as emerald or as the fresh grass of early spring. And a pale flickering light gleamed on the castle-walls, and the moat seemed filled with a glowing fire.

You love that old garret-roof; and you nestle down under its slope with a sense of its protecting power that no castle-walls can give to your maturer years. Aye, your heart clings in boyhood to the roof-tree of the old family garret with a grateful affection and an earnest confidence, that the after-years whatever may be their successes, or their honors can never re-create.

It was for years subject to every storm of civil war was taken and retaken, the most famous siege lasting sixty days, when Henry III. personally conducted the operations, being attended by the Archbishop of Canterbury and the chief peers of the realm: this was in 1224, and the most ingenious engines of war were used to batter down the castle-walls, which till then had been regarded as impregnable.