In a stupid way he thought that this great brightness in an early and raw spring day must come from having seen so beautiful a lady; so, it was said in stories, were good knights' hearts elated after such a sight. But he was aware that his heart was like the grey lead in his side, and leaden sighs came heavily from him.
When he came to the gate in the outermost wall he tirled wearily at the pin. He was aware of a monstrous heaviness and tire in all his limbs. A man opened the little grating; loud yawns came from him and, very sleepily, he let down bars and chains and the gate back. From this gateway a short, white road went slantwise, up a green bank, to the chief gate of the Castle.
Young Lovell never looked at this man's face, and slowly he rode up the steep. He heard the man say:
"What lording be ye?" but he rode on mute. The man came running after him, his armour rattling like pot-lids. He caught Hamewarts by the bridle and, looking earnestly at Young Lovell's face, he said:
"Master, I mauna let ye pass only I ken your name." And then he cried out, and his eyes were almost out of his head:
"The Young Lovell!" He ran like a hare up the broad road; his hose were russet coloured.
Young Lovell grumbled to himself that it was strange to set so new a man to the gate that he should not know his master's son, and stranger still that the man should be of the men of his sister's husband of Cullerford, for all their followers had russet beneath their steel facings.
And then he saw old Elizabeth Campstones that had been help-maid to his mother's nurse, coming out of the littlest door of the inner castle wall and down the path across the green grass of the glacis. She was all in hodden grey, she carried a great basket of tumbled clouts upon her head, and so the tears poured from her red eyes that at the first she did not see him though she came into the road at his horse's forefoot. But when he said:
"Why greet ye, Elizabeth?" she looked up at him on high as he sat there, as if the sun dazzled her eyes. And then she screamed, a high long scream. She caught at her basket and she ran to his bridle.
"Come away," she cried out. "Cullerford and Haltwistle have ta'en your bonny Castle. Your father's dead. Your mother's jailed. There is no soul of yours true to you here."