_Ancient haunts of men have numberless tongues for those who know how to hear them speak; therein lies the whole secret of the fascination that they cast, even upon the uninitiated. Those, on the other hand, whose minds are attuned to the sweetness of “unheard melodies” turn to such places of long descent with the joy of the lover towards his bridal chamber, for the wedding of fantasy with truth. Divers, indeed, and many, might be the tales which the walls of Bindon-Cheveral could tell, from what remains of its old battlements to the present mansion._ _Its front, which the passer-by upon the turnpike-road may in leafless winter-time descry at the end of the long avenue of elms, has the peaceful and rich stateliness of the Jacobean country seat—but there is scarce a stone of its grey masonry, with its wide mullioned windows, its terrace balustrades and garden stairways, that has not once been piled to the arrogant height from which the Bindon Castle of stark Edward’s times looked down upon the country-side. The towers and walls are gone; but the keep still stands, sleeping now and shrouded under centuries of ivy—a kindly massive prop to the younger house, its descendant. The ornamental waters were once defensive moats: red they have turned with other than the sunset glow, and secretly they have rippled to different causes than the casting of a careless stone or the leap of the great fat carp after a bait. Where the pleasure-grounds are now stretched in formal Italian pride spread, centuries back, the outer bailey of the once famous, now forgotten, stronghold._ _Stirring would be the Romance of old Bindon I could recount, as old Bindon revealed it to me—many the tales of love, of deeds, of hatred, of ambition. I could tell brave things of the builder of the Castle, and how he held the keep in defiance of Longshanks’ royal displeasure; or of the Walter, Lord of Bindon, Knight of the Garter, High Treasurer to the last Lancaster, and of his fortunes between the Two Roses; or yet of his grandson, beheaded after Hexham; and, under Richard Crookback, of the transfer of the good lands of Bindon to the “Jockey of Norfolk” who perished on Bosworth Field.—And these would be tales of clash of steel and waving banner as well as of wily diplomacy. Great figures would stalk across my page; it would be shot with scarlet and gold, royal colours; and high fortunes, those of England herself, would be mingled with the lesser doings of knight and baron._