But the march of events did not, as might well have been imagined, raise his drooping spirits. He was, indeed, more dismal than ever, having got a fixed idea in his head that he should never come to his own again. Though he had escaped unhurt from the two first assaults, by which the barbican and the outer bailey had been won, he was well aware that yet more serious struggles were before the besiegers ere they might hope to win the inner bailey and the keep. These assaults, he had made up his mind, he should not survive, and in his gloomiest, most funereal manner, called Ralph to him at the close of a summer's evening, when they were resting from duty in the house of Gilbert the Clothier, where they were quartered, and prepared to deliver to him what he supposed to be his last wishes and dispositions.
"Nephew Ralph," he began, in his most lugubrious tones, "thou hast been as a son to me, since my only son was cut off in early childhood."
"True, uncle much revered by me," replied Ralph, puzzled at this solemn address. "I know not quite if I have been a good son to thee, but thou hast, in good sooth, given me all the father's care I have ever known."
"And now, Nephew Ralph," William de Beauchamp continued, "I am about to confide to thee a very precious and holy message. Thou hast heard tell of the Lady Margaret de Ripariis?"
"Ay, certes," replied Ralph.
"And now that my time is at hand, and that the sands of my life are--"
"Thy time is at hand! By my faith, uncle, what mean these words?"
"Thou wottest that ere long we attack the old tower and the inner bailey," the uncle proceeded, in a tragic manner.
"I have but just come from the old tower, where John de Standen hath showed me how nigh is its overthrow."
"Hark ye, nephew. I shall fall then; I know it of a certainty. I have seen in a dream that I shall not survive the assault. I shall ne'er again set eyes on the Lady Margaret, now for many years the unhappy wife of Fulke de Breauté. Once, when we were young and she was fair, we plighted our troth, and I have never forgotten it, though a cruel fate tore us asunder. My wife, who was ne'er to me as the first love of my youth the Lady Margaret, hath been dead these many years; and had the time come for the end of the miserable Fulke, I would fain have offered myself again to my once affianced bride. But I die before him. I feel it. For us there is no hope."