creepy feeling one has in that narrow stairway between those massive walls is fully justified by past events. The old castle held out stoutly for the king in the Civil Wars. For many months, in 1645, it stood a desperate siege by Fairfax and General Poyntz before the garrison capitulated. Three years later it was captured again for the Royalists by Colonel Morrice, and held with great gallantry against General Lambert even after the execution of Charles I. In the March following, the stronghold surrendered, saving Morrice and five others who had not shown mercy to Colonel Rainsborough when he fell into their hands. These six had the option of escaping if they could within a week. "The garrison," says Lord Clarendon, "made several sallies to effect the desired escape, in one of which Morrice and another escaped; in another, two more got away; and when the six days were expired and the other two remained in the castle, their friends concealed them so effectually, with a stock of provisions for a month, that rendering the castle and assuring Lambert that the six were all gone, and he was unable to find them after the most diligent search, and had dismantled the castle, they at length got off also." There are still some small chambers hewn out of the solid rock on which the castle is built, reached by a subterranean passage on the north side; and perhaps here was the successful lurking-place. Colonel Morrice and his companion, Cornet Blackburn, were afterwards captured in disguise at Lancaster. In the pleasure gardens of to-day, with various inscription boards specifying the position of the Clifford Tower, Gascoyne's Tower, the King's Tower, and so forth, we get but a hazy idea of this once practically impregnable fortress, covering an area of seven acres. Concerning Richard II.'s death, it is doubtful whether the truth will ever be arrived at. The story that he escaped, and died nineteen years afterwards in Scotland, is less likely than the supposition that he died from the horrors of starvation; on the other hand, the story of the attack by Sir Piers Exton's assassins is almost strengthened by the evidence of a seventeenth-century tourist, who, prior to its destruction in the Civil War, records: "The highest of the seven towers is the Round Tower, in which that unfortunate prince was enforced to flee round a poste till his barbarous butchers inhumanly deprived him of life. _Upon that poste the cruell hackings and fierce blowes doe still remaine._" Mr. Andrew Lang perhaps can solve this historic mystery; or perhaps he has already done so? New Hall, close at hand, must have been a grand old house; but it is now roofless, and crumbling to decay. It is a picturesque late-Tudor mansion, with a profusion of mullioned windows and a central bay. The little glass that remains only adds to its forlorn appearance.