Which shall last eternally."
But all this was lost on Evroult and Richard. The inherited instincts of fierce generations of proud and ruthless ancestors were in them—as surely as the little tigerling, brought up as a kitten, begins eventually to bite and tear, so did these poor boys long for sword and lance—for the life of the wild huntsman or the wilder robber baron.
Instincts worthy of condemnation, yet not without their redeeming points; such were all our ancestors once, whether Angle, Saxon, Jute, or Northman; and the fusion has made the Englishman what he is.
* * * * *
The bell began to ring for Vespers; there was quite a quarter of an hour ere they went into chapel.
It was a dark autumnal evening, the sun had just gone down suddenly into a huge bank of dark clouds, and gloom had come upon the earth, as the two boys slipped into the bushes, which bordered their path, unseen.
The time seemed ages until the bell ceased and they knew that all their companions were in chapel, and that they must immediately be missed from their places.
Prompt to the moment, Evroult cried "Now, Richard," and ran to the wall; he had woven a rope from his bed-clothes, and concealed it about his person; he had wrenched a bar from his window, and twisted it into a huge hook; he now threw it over the summit of the lofty wall, and it bit—held.
Up the wall the boys swarmed, at the very moment when the Chaplain noticed their missing forms in their seats in chapel, and the keepers, too, who counted their numbers as they went in, found "two short," and went to search the grounds.
To search—but not to find. The boys were over the wall, and running for the woods.