a vacant stare of
astonishment.

"Roger de Fitz-Eustace. He is at hand; see thou prepare to meet him."

"Surely thou mockest, Roger de"--

"Peace! The last beam of to-morrow's sun shall see the banner of the
Fitz-Eustace beneath the gate."

"To-morrow! Why--how cometh my lord? Surely thou dreamest--or thy"--

"Once more I warn thee of his coming; see to his reception, or thy lord
will be wroth; and Roger with the ready hand was not used to be
over-nice, or loth in the administering of a rod to a fool's back."

The hermit departed without awaiting the reply.

But great was the stir and tumult in the stronghold of the Lacies on
that memorable day. The hurrying to and fro of the victuallers and
cooks--the clink of armourers and the din of horses prancing in their
warlike equipments--kept up an incessant jingle and confusion. A
watchman was stationed on the keep, whose duty it was to give warning
when the dust, curling on the wind, should betoken the approach of
strangers. The guards were set, the gates properly mounted, and the
drawbridge raised, so that their future lord might be admitted in due
form to his possession.

The sun went gloriously down towards the wide and distant verge of the
forest, and the brow of Pendle flung back his burning glance. Nature
seemed to welter in a wide atmosphere of light, from which there was no
escape. Panting and oppressed, the hounds lay basking by the wall, and
the shaggy wolf-dog crept, with slouching gait and lolling tongue, from
the glare into the shadow of some protecting buttress. The watchman sat
beneath the low battlements, hardly able to direct his aching eyes
towards the forest path below the hill. The monotony of this dull and
weary task was reiterated until the very effort became habitual, and he
could scarcely recognise or identify any change of object from the
absorption of his faculties by the listlessness it created. One slight
curl of dust had already escaped him, another waved softly above the
trees where the path wound upwards from the valley. Again it was
visible, and the watchman seemed to awaken as from a lethargy or a
dream. Strangers were surely approaching, but without retinue, as the
wreath of dust, from its slight continuance, would seem to intimate.
Just as he came to this conclusion, two horsemen swept into view, where
a broad turn of the road was visible, disappearing again rapidly behind
the arched boughs of the forest.

Bounding almost headlong