There was one Geoffrey de Mandeville in those days; and a regular man devil he was, but he had a redeeming feature in the shape of the prettiest niece that ever set a number of thick-headed fellows breaking lances, or knocking their iron-pot covered skulls together in a tournament in her honour. Her eyes were so bright that they gave young Aylmer de Mountfitchett a _coup de lodestars_ and so turned his brain that he went home and determined to make an end of himself. But he did not know how to do it; for, as he very reasonably said--it he cut his head off with his sword, he would be making two ends to himself. So he tried running upon the point of his lance, but it was so blunt that it hurt dreadfully; when all at once a bright thought struck him:--He would take an antidote for his trouble, and follow the advice of his friend, the Scotch knight, Sir Ben Nevis: he would take a hair of the dog that bit him, by trying whether the eyes that wounded so sharply would not cure. That very night he took a mandoline--which was the kind of banjo popular in those days,--and walked over to the castle at Stortford where the damsel dwelt, and after trying very hard to tune his instrument in the dark--not an easy task when a young man is nervous and keeps catching hold of the wrong peg--he tried a song--a light thing, written by one Alfrede de Tennyesone, beginning--"Come into ye garden, Maude." Well, the young man sang the song pretty well, considering that he was in one key, and the mandoline in another; while he had no voice at all, and several of the strings of the instrument were really and truly string; so that altogether, though he struck the light guitar and its strings, the effect was not striking, neither were the chords good. He sang it once as he stood upon the edge of the moat, getting his feet very wet. He sang it twice as he stood there getting his clothes wet, too, for the dew was very heavy. He sang it three times and was beginning to think that a flagon of Rhenish, or one of his bottles of Bass would be very acceptable when-- The lattice was illumined--there was a slight noise, and the casement was opened. Aylmer's heart beat violently, and he was about to speak, only he was tongue-tied; and, sinking upon his knees in the wet mud, and so spoiling his trunk hose, he awaited the result--his hand involuntarily breaking the silence that his tongue could not break: "Tumple, tumple; tumple; tumple; turn, turn, turn," went the mandoline. Then there was the sound of two bodies falling close by his side, and he sought for them--the pale moon lending her light--and he found-- One of the clumsy coppers they used in those days for half-pence, and a wedge of cold venison pasty, wrapped in a piece of _Bell's Life_.