My Olive branch looked puzzled for a few minutes, but she had the sense to perceive that comparative criticism is safe, when a departure from the beaten track is contemplated. Her departure was parabolic. “I didn't think it half as pretty a bird as Miss Midleton's parrot,” she said with conviction. Miss Midleton's parrot is a gorgeous conglomeration of crimson and blue, like the 'at of 'arriet, that should be looked at through smoked glasses and heard not at all. I think that I shall have Olive educated to take her place in a poultry run; while Rosamund looks after the rose garden. ***** My antiquary came to me early on the day after I had asked him for information about the hanging gardens. “I've been talking to my friend Thompson on the subject of those hanging gardens of the Duke's,” said he; “and I thought that you would like to hear what he says. He agrees with me--I fancied he would. The Duke had no power to hang any one in his gardens, Thompson says; and even if he had the power, the pear-trees that we see there now weren't big enough to hang a man on.” “A man--a man! My dear sir, I wasn't thinking of his hanging men there: it was clothes--clothes--linen--pants--shirts--pajamas, and the like.” “Oh, that's quite another matter,” said he. I agreed with him. CHAPTER THE FIFTH In a foregoing page I brought those who are ready to submit to my guidance up to the boundary wall of my Garden of Peace by the stone staircases sloping between the terraces of the old hanging gardens of the Castle moat. With apologies for such a furtive approach I hasten to admit them through the entrance that is in keeping with their rank and station. I bow them through the Barbican Entrance, which is of itself a stately tower, albeit on the threshold of modernity, having been built in the reign of Edward II., really not more than six hundred years ago. I feel inclined to apologise for mentioning this structure of yesterday when I bring my friends on a few yards to the real thing--the true Castle gateway, gloriously gaunt and grim, with the grooves for the portcullis and the hinges on which the iron-barbed gate once swung. There is no suggestion in its architecture of that effeminacy of the Perpendicular Period, which may be seen in the projecting parapet of the Barbican, pierced to allow of the molten lead of my antiquary being ladled out over the enemy who has not been baffled by the raising of the drawbridge. Molten lead is well enough in its way, and no doubt, when brought up nice and warm from the kitchen, and allowed to drop through the apertures, it was more or less irritating as it ran off the edge of the helmets below and began to trickle down the backs of an attacking party. The body-armour was never skintight, and molten lead has had at all times an annoying way of finding out the joinings in a week-day coat of mail; we know how annoying the drip of a neighbour's umbrella can be