“Nay, if this be not enchantment, I know not what is,” said Joceline. “Truly, Mistress Alice, I think you had better throw away this gimcrack. Such gifts from such hands are a kind of press-money which the devil uses for enlisting his regiment of witches; and if they take but so much as a bean from him, they become his bond-slaves for life—Ay, you look at the gew-gaw, but to-morrow you will find a lead ring, and a common pebble in its stead.” “Nay, Joceline, I think it will be better to find out that dark-complexioned woman, and return to her what seems of some value. So, cause enquiry to be made, and be sure you return her ring. It seems too valuable to be destroyed.” “Umph! that is always the way with women,” murmured Joceline. “You will never get the best of them, but she is willing to save a bit of finery.—Well, Mistress Alice, I trust that you are too young and too pretty to be enlisted in a regiment of witches.” “I shall not be afraid of it till you turn conjuror,” said Alice; “so hasten to the well, where you are like still to find the woman, and let her know that Alice Lee desires none of her gifts, any more than she did of her society.” So saying, the young lady pursued her way to the Lodge, while Joceline went down to Rosamond’s Well to execute her commission. But the fortune-teller, or whoever she might be, was nowhere to be found; neither, finding that to be the case, did Joceline give himself much trouble in tracking her farther. “If this ring, which I dare say the jade stole somewhere,” said the underkeeper to himself, “be worth a few nobles, it is better in honest hands than in that of vagabonds. My master has a right to all waifs and strays, and certainly such a ring, in possession of a gipsy, must be a waif. So I shall confiscate it without scruple, and apply the produce to the support of Sir Henry’s household, which is like to be poor enough. Thank Heaven, my military experience has taught me how to carry hooks at my finger-ends—that is trooper’s law. Yet, hang it, after all, I had best take it to Mark Everard and ask his advice—I hold him now to be your learned counsellor in law where Mistress Alice’s affairs are concerned, and my learned Doctor, who shall be nameless, for such as concern Church and State and Sir Henry Lee.—And I’ll give them leave to give mine umbles to the kites and ravens if they find me conferring my confidence where it is not safe.” CHAPTER THE NINETEENTH. Being skilless in these parts, which, to a stranger, Unguided and unfriended, often prove Rough and inhospitable. TWELFTH NIGHT. There was a little attempt at preparation, now that the dinner hour was arrived, which showed that, in the opinion of his few but faithful domestics, the good knight had returned in triumph to his home.