Now all was very still in the house, so that the tap-tapping of a twig by the window-pane seemed to me a little frightful, although I was a boy of spirit. Outside was the black of an early summer night before the moon has risen, and going to the window upon the tapping I could see no star for the myrtle boughs. Yet sure I was that were I outside the purple would be pierced by innumerable eyes of light, and I was greatly tempted to return to the garden. Indeed, out in the night there would be companionship, although every bird slept well within the boughs. It is the houses men build that breed these phantoms of the brain, and not the free air. But disregarding the temptation I went back to my book, knowing full well the pleasure it would give my lord to learn that I had been diligent in his absence. Wonderful it was that he was hardly less in love with learning than with adventure. Indeed a man of such parts was this knight and master of mine that there seemed to be nothing admirable in which he did not excel. And if I am blind to his faults, even to this day when I repent me of certain share of mine in his adventures, let that be forgiven me, for surely I owed him all love and loyalty. As the night went I heard the scullions who had been disporting themselves in the town return one by one, and the bolting and barring of doors. The songs of the sailors which came up from the shipping in the bay fell off and ceased. Silence fell on the town, a silence as unbroken as that of the sleepers yon in St. Mary’s yard, and presently drowsiness overcoming me I too slept. CHAPTER II.—THE APPARITION OF THE MONK. The room in which I had studied and now slept was that to the right hand as you entered the door of the Manor-house. It was lined stoutly with oak, and it was dark because, though it had two fair windows, they were much obscured by the myrtles my lord had planted, which had thriven exceedingly in this mild air. This room, as I have said, my lord used for a dining-hall. Else when he was within doors he sat in the oriel of the pleasant room overhead; and it was there that he and Master Spenser would sit and smoke or be silent; and there, which is not to be forgotten, Sir Walter listened to _The Faëry Queen_.