He saw that when the Lady Maud accompanied him they were wont to repair to the farthermost extremities of the palace grounds where, by a littlepostern gate, she admitted a certain officer of the Guards to whom the Queen had forbidden the privilege of the court.

'With eyes bent upon the ground, then, or only raised enough to prevent his stumbling over such obstacles as lay in his way, the religious man moved slowly forward until he reached a smallpostern in the wall of the sisters' orchard, through which he passed, closing it behind him.

Think you can find your way?" he continued, accompanying me to the gate, apostern in the high garden wall.

"If I were in your place, Mynheer John," the young girl timidly continued, "I should leave by thepostern, which leads into a deserted by-lane, whilst all the people are waiting in the High Street to see you come out by the principal entrance.

The West Wind reigns over the seas surrounding the coasts of these kingdoms; and from the gateways of the channels, from promontories as if from watch-towers, from estuaries of rivers as if frompostern gates, from passage-ways, inlets, straits, firths, the garrison of the Isle and the crews of the ships going and returning look to the westward to judge by the varied splendours of his sunset mantle the mood of that arbitrary ruler.

What you must do is carry me in your arms, and lay me across or set me upright in somepostern, and I'll hold it either with this lance or with my body."

"For myself, on the other hand, my lord," returned the governor, "when the first rebel should pass the threshold of mypostern doors I should be obliged to kill you with my own hand, since you were confided peculiarly to my care and as I am obliged to give you up, dead or alive."

She had opened thepostern gate in the wall, and through the narrow opening was framed a wonderful picture of the Cornish sea, rolling into the rock-studded bay.

We must find the defect in the armor of the old fairy; a hole, a falsepostern, some joint or other."

He sat within earshot, milking the cows by the light of a lantern, which I seized unceremoniously, and, calling out that I would send it back on the morrow, rushed to the nearestpostern.

The little servant happening to be entering the fortress with two hot rolls, I passed through thepostern and crossed the drawbridge, in her company, and so came without announcement into the presence of Wemmick as he was making tea for himself and the Aged.

If Prior Aymer rode hard in the chase, or remained long at the banquet, if Prior Aymer was seen, at the early peep of dawn, to enter thepostern of the abbey, as he glided home from some rendezvous which had occupied the hours of darkness, men only shrugged up their shoulders, and reconciled themselves to his irregularities, by recollecting that the same were practised by many of his brethren who had no redeeming qualities whatsoever to atone for them.