There had been something spoken accidentally, that went too deep, and both felt, perhaps, though almost unconsciously, that nothing more could be said on that topic without saying more still; and as there was a third person by, of course the matter dropt, and equally of course, a long pause ensued, which grew unpleasant. "I thought," said Burrel at length, "that we were to meet with some antiquities--even more interesting than the house itself--at least, your father said so;" and conscious that he had made an awkward speech, and very little to the purpose, Burrel looked up and smiled, though many other men would have looked down and coloured. "You are not far from them," replied Captain Delaware--for Blanche's eyes were fixed upon the ground, and her thoughts were--not at Nova Zembla. "But surely you are not tired?" "Nay, nay, any thing but tired," answered Burrel; "but your father declared he would catechize me upon these ruins severely, and I was only afraid that I should forget them altogether." "A piece of inattention, which Blanche or I would excuse much more readily than my father," replied the good-humoured sailor. "But we are close upon them. You see those two wooded banks that fall across each other, with the stream flowing out in foam from between them? They form the mouth of a little glen, about a hundred yards up which, stands the Prior's Fountain, and farther still the Hermit's Chapel. In architecture, I believe, they are unique, and there is many a curious tradition about both." "Hush, hush, William!" cried his sister, seeing him about to proceed, "Never tell the traditions but upon the spot. Oh, an old legend, in these days of steam and manufactory, can never be properly told, except under the gray stone and the ivy, where the memories of a thousand years are carved by the chisel of time on every tottering pinnacle and mouldering cornice, which vouch, by their unusual forms, for the strange stories of their founders!" "Oh, let us go on, by all means!" said Burrel, smiling; "an old legend is worthy of every accessary with which we can furnish it.--But there it is," he added, as they turned the angle of the bank, and, entering the little glen, had before them a small Gothic building, covered with the richest ornaments of the most luxurious age of Norman architecture. "That, I suppose, is the Chapel?" "No, that is the Prior's Fountain," answered Captain Delaware; "and certainly the monks must have attached some peculiar importance to it, from covering it over with so splendid a structure."