THE

PANELLED HOUSE:

A Chronicle of Two Sisters' Livęs.

BY

M. BRAMSTON.

"She crossed him once, she crossed him twice,

That lady was so brave;

The fouler grew his goblin hue,

The darker grew the cave.

She crossed him thrice, that lady bold,

He rose beneath her hand

The fairest knight on Scottish mould."

SCOTT.

PUBLISHED UNDER THE DIRECTION OF

THE COMMITTEE OF GENERAL LITERATURE AND EDUCATION,
APPOINTED BY THE SOCIETY FOR PROMOTING

CHRISTIAN KNOWLEDGE.

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[Reprinted from the "PEOPLE'S MAGAZINE."]

THE PANELLED HOUSE:

I Chronicle of Two Sisters' Lives.

PART I.

CHAPTER I.

INTRODUCTORY.

"Not wholly in the busy world, nor quite
Beyond it, blooms the garden that I love.
News from the humming city comes to it
In sound of funeral or of marriage bells,
And, sitting muffled in dark leaves, you hear
The windy clanging of the minster clock."

TENNYSON.

LYKE is an inland village in one of our southern counties, not far from the town of Erconbury, which boasts a cathedral and the remains of an old Roman wall. Erconbury itself is a quiet, sleepy old place, connected with the busy world by the railroad which runs through it, but by nothing else. The great pile of the cathedral sleeps in the sun as though conscious of the many centuries it has stood there, and weary of its long survival of the scenes and ideas of its youth the rooks circle round its grey spire from their nests in the trees in the Close; and the houses cluster near it as if seeking its protection, and yet not too close, as if they feared to be presumptuous in approaching too near. Therefore, if Erconbury is the representative of the

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