"That I can, noble sir," answered Wattie, impressed by the stranger's tone. "Do I not dwell in Langaffer myself!"
"Then perhaps, young man, thou knowest the Castle of Ravenspur?"
"The ruined tower of Count Colin of Ravenspur!" cried Wattie, "why, that is close to Langaffer. Our village folk call it 'the fortress' still, although wild and dismantled since the time it was forsaken by——"
"Name not Count Colin to me!" cried the knight, impatiently. "The base traitor that left his own land to join hands with the enemy! His sable plume shall ne'er again wave in his own castle-yard!... But come, hasten, young man, and guide me straight to Ravenspur. Our men, you say, are encamped at Langaffer?"
"That they are," returned Wattie; "well-nigh every house is filled with them. They arrived in high spirits this morning; and doubtless, by this time, are sleeping as heavily as they were carousing an hour ago."
"All the better," cried the knight, "for it will be a different sort of sleep some of them may have ere the morrow's setting sun glints through the stems of these forest trees! And now, let us hasten to Ravenspur."
So saying, he drew himself up to his full height, lifted his sword from the ground and hung it on his side, and strode away with Wattie, looking all the while like a great giant in company of a puny dwarf.
As they emerged from the forest Wattie pointed with his finger across the plain to the village of Langaffer, and then to a hill overhanging it, crowned by a fortress which showed in the distance its chiselled outlines against the evening sky. An hour's marching across the country brought them close to the dismantled castle. The moonbeams depicted every grey stone overgrown with moss and ivy, and the rank weeds choking the apertures which once had been windows.
"An abode for the bat and the owl," remarked Wattie, "but, brave sir, you cannot pass the night here. Pray—pray come to my tiny house in the village, and rest there till the morning dawns."
"I accept thy hospitality, young man," said the warrior, "but first thou canst render me a service. Thou art little and light. Canst clamber up to yonder stone where the raven sits, and tell me what thou beholdest far away to the west?" Whereupon Wattie, who was agile enough, and anxious to help the stranger, began to climb up, stone by stone, the outer wall of the ruined fortress. A larger man might have felt giddy and insecure; but he, with his tiny figure, sprang from ledge to ledge so swiftly, holding firmly by the tufts of grass and the trailing ivy, that ere he had time to think of danger, he had reached the spot where, a moment before, a grim-looking raven had been keeping solemn custody. Here the stone moved, and Wattie fancied he heard something rattle as he set his foot upon it. The raven had now perched herself on a yet higher eminence, on a piece of the old coping-stone of the castle parapet; and she flapped her great ugly wings, and cawed and croaked, as if displeased at this intrusion on her solitude. Wattie followed the ill-omened bird, and drove her away from her vantage-ground, where he himself now found a better footing from which to make his observations.