Simon and his royal pupil showed symptoms of agitation and alarm.

   The assembly was suddenly dissolved. The proud ambassador of a prouder prelate was astonished and bewildered, and hastily took his leave to report these occurrences to his master.

   The whole of these proceedings, in all probability, were but the artful contrivance of an ambitious priest; and yet, connected as they were with a female whose well-known predilection for the occult sciences, and herself no mean adept therein, they assumed in those ages of credulity and superstition more the character of miraculous events than as happening in the common course and established order of nature. The alarm of the king, too, evidently at the appearance of the figure, caused some to say that it was the arch-enemy himself to whom these conspirators had sold themselves.

   In the meantime, Dick, having been delivered over to the tormentors, was transferred to the prison or dungeon by the porch. He bore his mishap with wondrous fortitude and equanimity. Many a strange inquiry and silly speech did he make as he heard the sound of footsteps pass the door, through which a few chinks admitted a doubtful glimmer into his cell.

   "I seay—hears to me, lad?" shouted he to a gruff Fleming, as he passed to and fro before the entrance to his prison-house; but the guard heeded him not. Dick listened; then, repeating his demand, muttered certain conventional expressions, not over-nice either in their form or application. He then began to sing, performing a series of

    cantabile

   movements in the most ludicrous manner possible; sometimes chanting a

    Miserere

   or an

    Ave

   , then breaking into some wild northern ballad or roundelay of unintelligible import. It was in the midst of a cadence which he was terminating with great earnestness and effect that the first deep rumble, the result of Simon's appeal to the truth and justice of their cause, interrupted Dick's vocal dispositions for a while; but when the second concussion took place, shaking

   the very stones in their sockets and the hard floor under his feet, Dick ran whooping and bellowing round his den as though he had been possessed, laughing, amid the wild uproar, like some demon sporting 

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