“To thee, perhaps, it may be of little interest,” said Hepborne; “but I could be well contented to be permitted to solve it in Norham Castle. Why wert thou born with feelings so much at war with what beseemeth a knight, as to make thee eschew all converse with those fair beings, the sun of whose beauty shineth but to brace up the otherwise damp and flaccid nerves of chivalrous adventure?”
“Nay, thou mightest as well demand of me why my raven locks are not as fair as thine,” said Assueton with a smile; “yea, or bid him who is born blind to will to see.”
“By Saint Baldrid, but I do pity thee as much as if thou wert blind,” said Hepborne. “Nay, what is it but to be blind, yea, to want every sense, to be thus unmoved with——” [[22]]
“Ha! see where the broad bosom of Tweed at last glads our eyes, glistening yonder with the pale light that still lingers in the west,” exclaimed Assueton, overjoyed to avail himself of so happy an opportunity of interrupting his friend’s harangue.
“Yonder farther shadowy bank is Scotland—our country,” cried Hepborne, with deep feeling.
“God’s blessing on her hardy soil!” said Assueton, with enthusiasm.
“Amen!” said Hepborne. “To her shall we henceforth devote our arms, long enow wielded in foreign broils, where, in truth, heart did hardly go with hand.”
“But where lieth the hamlet of Norham?” inquired Assueton.
“Seest thou not where a few feeble rays are shed from its scattered tenements on the hither meadow below?” replied Hepborne. “Nay, thou mayest dimly descry the church yonder, sanctified by the shelter it did of erst yield to the blessed remains of the holy St. Cuthbert, what time the impious Danes drove them from Lindisferne.”
“But what, methinks, is most to thy present purpose, Sir Knight,” observed Mortimer Sang, “yonder brighter glede proceedeth, if I rightly guess, from the blazing hearth of Master Sylvester Kyle, as thirsty a tapster as ever broached a barrel, and one who, if he be yet alive, hath hardly, I wot, his make on either side the Border, for knavery and sharp wit.”