"They had horns, and tails, and huge ears."
"They say the wood is haunted by wood demons."
"Then thou wert afraid to follow?"
"We dare fight men, we fear none who breathe; but we shrink from Satan and his hosts. Still we sent a flight of arrows, and they vanished."
"Was the distance near enough to do execution?"
"Scarcely, had they been men; it mattered not if they were what they appeared to be."
Strange to say, the idea that the foe had been masquerading for the purpose of frightening them, never struck our Normans.
"When they had gone, we approached the spot," continued the aged knight of Senville, "and found foot marks in the snow, which, from the previous fall, lay lightly on the ground, for the storm of tonight had hardly set in. There were marks of one of our parties, and we saw by torchlight strange footprints, as if they had been tracked by two or three daring foes--we thought we distinguished hoof marks."
A terrible silence fell upon the whole assembly, as the idea that they had been contending with demons, and not with mortals, fell upon them, and perhaps the bravest would have hesitated to enter the forest that night, however dire the need.
The baron knew this; yet when supper was over, when the hour of retiring to rest had arrived, and still there were no signs of his son, he selected a band of trusty warriors, who, in spite of the story of the demons, which Eustace's men had made known throughout the castle, would not be untrue to their lord.