The Master of Greylands: A Novel
the waves dash against its lower walls at high water. The back of the building is to the road, the front to the sea. A portion of it is in ruins; but this end is quite habitable, and in it live some ladies, twelve, who are called the Grey Sisters, or sometimes the Grey Ladies, and who devote themselves to charity and to doing good. In spite of the appellation, they are of the Reformed Faith; strict, sound Protestants: a poor community as to funds, but rich in goodness. They keep a few beds for the sick among the villagers, or for accidents; and they have a day school for the village children. If they could get better children to educate, they would be glad; and some of the ladies are accomplished gentlewomen. Mr. Castlemaine, who is, so to say, head and chief of the village of Greylands, looking down on it from his mansion, Greylands' Rest, does not countenance these Sisters: he discountenances them, in fact, and has been heard to ridicule the ladies. The Master of Greylands, the title generally accorded him, is no unmeaning appellation, for in most things his will is law. Beyond the part of the building thus inhabited, there is a portion that lies in complete ruin; it was the chapel in the days of the monks, but its walls are but breast-high now; and beyond it comes another portion, still in tolerable preservation, called the Friar's Keep. The Friar's Keep was said to have gained its appellation from the fact that the confessor to the convent lived in it, together with some holy men, his brethren. A vast pile of buildings it must have been in its prime; and some of the traditions said that this Friar's Keep was in fact a monastery, divided from the nunnery by the chapel. A wild, desolate, grand place it must have been, looking down on the turbulent sea. Tales and stories were still told of those days: of the jolly monks, of the secluded nuns, some tales good, some bad--just as tales in the generations to come will be told of the present day. But, whatever scandal may have been whispered, whatever dark deeds of the dark and rude ages gone by, none could be raised of the building now. The only inhabited part of it, that occupied by the good Sisters, who were blameless and self-denying in their lives, who lived but to do good, was revered by all. That portion of it was open, and fair, and above-board; but some mysterious notions existed in regard to the other portion--the Friar's Keep. It was said to be haunted.

Now, this report, attaching to a building of any kind, would be much laughed at in these later times. For one believer in the superstition (however well it may be authenticated), ten, ay twenty, would ridicule it. The simple villagers around believed it religiously: it was said that the 
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