mighty proportions; there are also bits of other parts of the castle, the whole enclosed within a wall of ample circuit. [Illustration: FORD CASTLE.] [Illustration: FLODDEN FIELD.] In the days when it held a royal garrison, Norham had various castellans, some of them men of distinction in their day; but the most famous of them since the "tale of Flodden Field" was told, has been "Sir Hugh the Heron bold." This "Baron of Twisell and of Ford" passed among men as William Heron; but Hugh was more poetical, and so his baptismal name was changed. Nor, at the time selected for the Lord of Fontenaye's visit, was he here to be twitted with his witching lady's gallantries. Two years before this his bastard brother had taken part in the slaughter of the Scottish Warden of the Middle Marches, Sir Robert Ker of Cessford; and as Sir William himself had been in some sort accessory to the crime, Henry had thought it well to deliver him and one of the actual murderers up to justice, so that at this time he was lying in durance at Fastcastle. This, of course, is the fault of the facts, not of the poetry. Nor need it be disappointing to find Sir Walter himself saying that the Marmion of the romance is "entirely a fictitious personage." When, indeed, it is remembered that one of the Marmions did verily come here, though long years before--in the reign which witnessed the triumph at Bannockburn, instead of the overthrow at Flodden--the poet might very well have been astonished at his own moderation. The errand of the real Marmion was a good deal more romantic than that of his imaginary descendant. At a great feast in Lincolnshire he had been endued with a gold-crested helmet by a lady who had nothing better to do than to drive a brave man into mortal peril. Her charge to him was to "go into the daungerest place in England, and ther to let the healme be seene and known as famous." So he sped him here to Norham, and within four days of his coming, Philip of Mowbray, the guardian of Berwick--now in the hands of the elated Scots--appeared before the walls "with the very flour of the men of the Scottish marches." The castellan at this time was a Grey of Chillingham, who drew out his men before the barriers, and then bade the knight-errant, "al glittering in gold, and wearing the healme," to ride like a valiant man among his foes, adding, "and I forsake God if I rescue not thy body, dead or alyve, or I myself wyl dye for it." Thereupon the knight mounted and rode into the midst of the enemy, "the which layed sore stripes on him, and pulled hym at the last out of his sadel to the ground." But now Grey and his men "lette prick yn among the Scottes" and put them to rout; and he of the "healme," though "sore beten," was horsed again and took part in the chase. As it must have been this visit which made the poet bring his Marmion to Norham, so no doubt it was the deed itself, coupled with an event which actually