When he reached it there was nobody there; but as he looked through the archway into the court, he saw the figures of the warder and several soldiers standing with their backs turned towards him, gazing towards the other side of the building. There was a bright light coming from that point; and taking a step farther forward, under the archway, he perceived a procession of priests and boys of the chapel, with torches and crucifixes borne before them, while a tall old man was seen carrying reverently the consecrated bread.
The solemn train took its way direct towards the lodging of Alured de Ashby; and turning back with feelings in which were mingled, in a strange and indescribable manner, anguish and satisfaction, horror and relief, Richard de Ashby murmured--"It is done!--It is done!" and sped his way homeward with the quick but irregular footstep of crime and terror.
It were painful to watch him through the progress of that night. Sleep was banished from his eyelids--sleep, that will visit the couch of utter despair, came not near the troubled brain of doubt, and apprehension, and anxiety. He walked to and fro in his chamber--he laid not down his head upon his bed--he sat gloomily gazing on the pale untrimmed lamp--he rested his eyes upon his folded arms, while dizzy images of sorrow and distress, and dying men, and shame, and agony, and scorn, and anguish here, and punishment hereafter, whirled before his mental vision, from which no effort could shut them out.
Thus passed he the hours, till a faint blue light began to mingle with the glare of the expiring lamp; and then, starting up, he hastily threw on a hood and cloak, and, leaving his servants sleeping in the house, proceeded towards the north gate of the town.
It had been an angry and a stormy night, and the rain, which was running off the rocky streets of Nottingham, still hung upon the green blades of grass and the boughs of the trees, which in that day came almost up to the walls of the city. The clouds were clearing off, however, and blue patches were seen mingling with the mottled white and grey overhead, while to the right of the town a yellow gleam appeared in the sky, showing the rapid coming of the sun.
Such was the scene as Richard de Ashby looked through the gate of Nottingham, which was thronged with peasantry, bringing in their wares to the market even at that early hour. It was a sight refreshing and bright to the eye, and might have soothed any other mind than his; but the fire that burnt internally, that throbbed in his heart and thrilled through his veins, made the cool air of the autumnal morning feel like the chill of fever where shivering cold spreads over the outer frame, while the intense heat remains unquelled within.
One of the first objects that his eye lighted upon was the form of the old woman, standing without the gate, and looking back towards it; and hurrying on, he was at her side in a minute.
"Ha, ha!" she said, in her usual broken and tremulous voice, "you are a lie-a-bed--I thought you were not coming. Well, let us speed on." And forward she walked, certainly not at the most rapid pace, while Richard de Ashby asked her many a question about old Gaffer Sweeting and his good dame--what was his age? whether he had any sons, and whether there were many cottages thereabout?
The old woman answered querulously, but none the less satisfactorily. He was an old man of seventy-three, she said, and he had had two sons; but one had died in consequence of a fall from a tree, and another had been killed at Lewes.
"Houses!" she exclaimed. "Few houses, I trow. Why; that's the very reason that good Father Mark sent the girl there. Wherever there are houses or young men, there is temptation for us, poor women. But this place is quite a desert, like that where the Eremites lived that he talks of. If you don't tempt her, I don't know who will, there."