"Nor ever will, Kenric; though it break my heart to do it."
"Tush! tush! girl; hearts are tough things, and do not break so easily; and when you kiss me to-morrow at the castle, you'll think of this no more. See, here's the boy with the pony and the pillion. Now, hurry, and coax my mother out, and get on your cloak and wimple, that's a good lass. I would not have you here when Foulke d'Oilly's riders come, no! not to be the Lord of Kentmere. Hurry! hurry!"
Many minutes had not passed, before, after a long embrace, and a flood of tears on the part of Edith, the two women mounted on the sturdy pony, the wife in the saddle, and the aged mother seated on a sort of high-backed pillion—made like the seat of an arm-chair—and secured by a broad belt to the waist of her daughter, took their way across the wooded hills toward Ambleside, the boy Ralph leading the animal by the head, and two brace of noble alans, his master's property, which Kenric did not choose to expose to the cupidity of his expected captors, gamboling in front, or following gravely at heel, according to their various qualities of age and temper.
The son and husband gazed after them wistfully, so long as they remained in sight; and when, as they crossed the last ridge of the low intermediate hills which divide the narrow glen of the upper Kent from the broader dale of Windermere, standing out in bold relief against the strong light of the western sky, Edith waved her kerchief, he drew his hard hand across his brow, turned into his desolate dwelling, and, sitting down by the hearth, was soon lost in gloomy meditation.
Darkness soon fell over lake and meadow, mountain and upland. Hundreds of stars were twinkling in the clear sky, to which a touch of frost, not unusual at this early season among those hill regions, had lent an uncommon brilliance, but the moon had not yet risen.
Kenric was now becoming restless and impatient, and, as is frequently the case when we are awaiting even the most painful things, which we know to be inevitable, he soon found himself wishing that the time would come, that he might know the worst, and feeling that the suspense was worse than almost any reality.
Several times he went to the door, and stood gazing down the valley, over the brown woods and gray, glimmering waters, to look and listen, if he might discover any signs of the coming danger. But his eyes could penetrate but a little way into the darkness, and no sounds came to his ears, but the deep sough of the west wind among the pine boughs of the mountain top, the hoarse ripple of the brook brawling against the boulders which lay scattered in its bed, and the hooting of the brown owls, answering each other from every ivy-bush and holly-brake on the wooded hill-sides.
Nothing could be more calm or peaceful than the scene, nothing less indicative of man's presence, much more of his violence and angry passions. Not even the baying of a solitary house-dog awoke the echoes, though oftentimes the wild, yelping bark of the fox came sharp from the moorland, and once the long-drawn howl of a wolf, that most hideous and unmistakable of savage cries, wailed down the pass like the voice of a spirit, ominous of evil.
The hunter's spirit was aroused in the watcher by the familiar sound. He listened intently, but it was heard no more, and, shaking his head, he muttered to himself, "He is up in the dark corrie under Norton pike; I noted the wool and bones of lambs, and the spoil of hares there, when I was last through it, but I laid the scathe to the foxes. I knew not we had a wolf so nigh us. Well, if they trap not me to-night, I'll see and trap that other thief to-morrow. And thinking of that, since they come not, I trow there is no courtesy compels me to sit up for them, and there's some thing in my head now that chimes a later hour than vespers. I'll take a night-cap, and lay me down on the settle. Gilbert, happy dog, has been asleep there on the hearth these two hours;" and, suiting the action to the word, he drew a mighty flagon of mead, quaffed it to the dregs, and, throwing a heavy wooden bar across the door, wrapped his cloak about him, and, casting himself on a settle in the chimney corner, was soon buried in deep slumber.
When he woke again, which he did with a sudden start, the moon was shining brightly through the latticed casements, and there were sounds on the air which he easily recognized as the clash of mail coats and the tramp of horses, coming up at a trot over the stony road. Looking out from a loop beside the door, he perceived at once that the moment he expected had arrived. Ten men, heavily armed, but wearing dark-colored surcoats over their mail, and having their helmets cased with felt, to prevent their being discovered by the glimmering of the steel in the moonlight, had ridden up to the foot of the little knoll on which the cottage stood, and were now concerting their future movements.