All traces of the last day's festival had disappeared; the citizens had resumed their usual occupations; the artisan had gone to his work, the merchant to his warehouse, the tradesman to his stall, the monk to his cloister, the priest to his chapel or his church. The streets, though there was many a passenger hurrying to and fro, seemed almost empty, by comparison; and a scene that was in itself gay, looked dull from the want of all the glitter and pageantry of the preceding afternoon. The inn, called the Acorn, at which Richard of Woodville had taken up his abode, was a low building, in what we still term the Strand, between the Cross at Charing and a very small monastery, which was soon after attached to the abbey of Roncesvalles in Navarre, and acquired the name of Roncêvaux. The entrance to the Acorn was a tall dark arch, and as soon as Richard of Woodville rode in, followed by his two attendants--for Ned Dyram he had not seen since the day before--the host presented himself, saying, with a low reverence and a smile, "There has been a fair maid seeking you, noble sir. There have been tears in her eyes, too, full lately. I hope you are not a faithless squire, to make the pretty maiden weep." "Poor thing, she has good cause," answered Woodville, gravely. "She is the poor old man's daughter, I suppose, who was killed by the horses last night. When did she say she would return?" "She is here now! she is here now!" cried the host's wife, from within. "How can you be such a fool, Jenkyn! I took her in till the noble gentleman returned. I knew she was no light o' love, but only came from foreign lands." "I never said she was, good wife," replied her husband. "Shall I bring her up, sir, to your chamber?" "No," answered Richard; "it wants an hour of dinner yet; let her come with me to the hall, if it be vacant." "That it is, discreet sir," replied the host. "Now, I warrant you," he continued, murmuring to himself, as he walked away to call the poor girl to her kind benefactor, "he has got some lady love himself, and fears it should come to her ears, were he to entertain a pretty maiden in his own chamber." Perhaps some such thought might pass through Richard of Woodville's mind; but certainly it would never have entered therein, had it not been for the host's first suspicion; and he would have received the poor girl in his own room without hesitation, though the minstrels of that day and their followers were generally a somewhat dissolute and licentious race. It has happened strangely, indeed, in all ages, that those who follow, as their profession, the sweetest of arts, music, which would seem intended to elevate and purify the mind and heart, should be so frequently obnoxious to the charge of immoral life; but so it has been, alas, though difficult to account for.