CHAPTER IX.
HOW AMYAS KEPT HIS CHRISTMAS DAY "Take aim, you noble musqueteers, And shoot you round about; Stand to it, valiant pikemen, And we shall keep them out.
There's not a man of all of us A foot will backward flee; I'll be the foremost man in fight, Says brave Lord Willoughby!" Elizabethan Ballad.
It was the blessed Christmas afternoon.

The light was fading down; the even-song was done; and the good folks of Bideford were trooping home in merry groups, the father with his children, the lover with his sweetheart, to cakes and ale, and flapdragons and mummer's plays, and all the happy sports of Christmas night.

One lady only, wrapped close in her black muffler and followed by her maid, walked swiftly, yet sadly, toward the long causeway and bridge which led to Northam town.
Sir Richard Grenville and his wife caught her up and stopped her courteously.
"You will come home with us, Mrs.Leigh," said Lady Grenville, "and spend a pleasant Christmas night ?" Mrs.Leigh smiled sweetly, and laying one hand on Lady Grenville's arm, pointed with the other to the westward, and said: "I cannot well spend a merry Christmas night while that sound is in my ears." The whole party around looked in the direction in which she pointed.
Above their heads the soft blue sky was fading into gray, and here and there a misty star peeped out: but to the westward, where the downs and woods of Raleigh closed in with those of Abbotsham, the blue was webbed and turfed with delicate white flakes; iridescent spots, marking the path by which the sun had sunk, showed all the colors of the dying dolphin; and low on the horizon lay a long band of grassy green.

But what was the sound which troubled Mrs.Leigh?
None of them, with their merry hearts, and ears dulled with the din and bustle of the town, had heard it till that moment: and yet now--listen! It was dead calm.

There was not a breath to stir a blade of grass.