"Now tell me truly what is this?" her master asked.
The old woman burst out into many ejaculations how that with the haste and her master's strange looks she did not know what she had told him and what she had missed out.
Certain it was that Richard Bek, Robert Bulmer, and Bertram Bullock held the White Tower for him, the Young Lovell. The others could not come to them for the White Tower stood on a rock twenty yards from the Castle and joined to it by such a narrow stone bridge that it was, as it were, a citadel. It could stand fast though all the rest of the Castle should be taken, having been devised for that purpose. Richard Bek and Robert Bulmer, poor squires, or almost of the degree of yeomen, had always been captains of the White Tower and in it the dead Lord Lovell had kept his marvellous store of gold—as much as four score thousand French crowns, more or less—and all these were theirs still, with such strong cannon as might well batter down the Castle; only Richard Bek would not do this. And to him there had resorted from time to time certain strong fellows that were still faithful to their master, creeping in the night along the narrow bridge into the tower ... such as Richard Raket, the Young Lovell's groom that had lost his teeth at the fight of Kenchie's Burn. There might be a matter of twenty-five of them that held it and victualled it by boats from the sea at night.
"Old woman," the Young Lovell said, "ye keep the best wine for the last, but ye have our Lord's warrant for that."
So he got slowly up and put the bit in the mouth of Hamewarts, that had been grazing, and when he was on that horse's back he looked down on Elizabeth Campstones and said—
"Old woman, tell me truly, shall I take thee with me upon this great horse; for I think my kin will very surely hang thee for having talked and walked with me?"
She looked up at him with a surly, sideways gaze.
"Ah, gentle lording," she said, "if I may not with my tongue save my neck from thy sisters and their men I may as well go hang, for my occupation will be gone." He left her straining a twisted and wet clout over the dark pool.
When he came to the high uplands where there was some heather, he saw a man with a grey coat with a hood, and as soon as that man was aware of him, he went away with great bounds like a hare, but casting his arms on high as he sprang. The Young Lovell was well accustomed to that stretch of land. It was full of soft, boggy places and he knew therefore that that man had some money in his poke and desired to betake himself where no horse could follow. But because the Young Lovell knew that land so well, he threaded Hamewarts between bog and soft places, calling the notes of the chase to hasten him. Thus the great horse breathed deep and made large bounds. And the Young Lovell thought that times were not all that they should be when every footman must run from every gentle upon a horse and upon Lovell ground. For either that man was a felon, which was not unlike, or he feared that the gentleman should rob him, which was more likely still. The Young Lovell was resolved that these things should be brought to better order on his lands, for he would fine, hang, or cut the ears off every felon of simple origin that was there. To the gentle robbers too, he would not be very easy, though this was not so light an enterprise, since most of them would prove to be his cousins or not much further off. Still, they could go harry the false Scots.
In five minutes he was come up to that man in grey, and that man cast himself at first on his knees in the heather and then on his face, for his sides were nearly burst with running and leaping. The Young Lovell sat still and looked down upon the hind, for he was never a lord of much haste. And afterwards, the man, with his face still among the heather, for he was afraid to look at death that might be ready for him—this man fumbled for the grey woollen poke that lay under him. He pushed it out and bleated—