"Nothing, lord. De Carnac is our chief; but when we knew you were coming, and heard how you had laid the Bull's brother, Louis de Valmont, on his back, great knight that he was, we waited; for, we said, 'When Sir Richard comes, we shall be led by one of St. Julien's own stock, and we shall see if he loves Raoul more than do we.'"
"You have done well, dear friend," said Richard, still very quietly. "Now tell me, how is my grandfather; well, save for his eyes?"
"Alas! he was nigh dead when he came back, and to-day the monks declared he would slip away; only desire for revenge keeps his soul in him."
"I must see him," said Longsword, simply; then to Musa, "Ha! my brother, will you be at my side in this adventure?"
"Allah akhbar," cried the Spaniard, his eyes on fire, "that Raoul shall feel my cimeter!"
"Softly, softly, dear son," quoth Sebastian, who had heard all, "Omnia licent, sed omnia non expediunt!"
"No Latin now, good father," was the Norman's prompt retort, and he turned to Bertrand: "To the castle with speed!"
Forward they rode through the squalid little village, where ragged peasants and slatternly women opened their eyes wide, and crossed themselves as their eyes lit on the "Saracen devils"; then they clattered onto the stone bridge, and past the toll-keeper's booth at the drawbridge in the middle span. Before them across a stretch of cleared land rose the castle: not a curiously planned system of outworks, barbicans, baileys, and keeps, as Richard saw in his older days, but a single massive tower, square, built from ponderous blocks of black basalt that could mock at battering-ram. It perched upon a rocky rising, at the foot a moat, deep, flooded by the stream, where even now the fish were leaping; outside the moat, a high wooden stockade; within this, the stables. From the crest far above, the eye could sweep to the farthest glens of the valley. Ten men could make good the hold against an army; for where was the hero that could mount to the only entrance—that door in the sheer wall thirty feet above the moat, and only a wooden drawbridge to reach it, which pulleys could lift in a twinkling?
Richard looked at the castle and shrugged his shoulders. "Is the hold of Raoul de Valmont like to this?" he asked.
"As you say, lord; only the outer wall is higher," replied Bertrand, while they left their steeds at the foot of the dizzy bridge. Richard blew through his teeth. "St. Michael," cried he, "there will be a tale to tell ere we get inside!"