standing over him in the silence of midnight with a lighted lamp in his
hand, and with it a recollection of being bidden to hush when he would
have spoken, and of being dressed by Diccon and one of the women,
bewildered with sleep, shuddering and chattering with cold.

He remembered being wrapped in the sheepskin that lay at the foot of
his bed, and of being carried in Diccon Bowman's arms down the silent
darkness of the winding stair-way, with the great black giant shadows
swaying and flickering upon the stone wall as the dull flame of the lamp
swayed and flickered in the cold breathing of the night air.

Below were his father and mother and two or three others. A stranger
stood warming his hands at a newly-made fire, and little Myles, as he
peeped from out the warm sheepskin, saw that he was in riding-boots and
was covered with mud. He did not know till long years afterwards that
the stranger was a messenger sent by a friend at the King's court,
bidding his father fly for safety.

They who stood there by the red blaze of the fire were all very still,
talking in whispers and walking on tiptoes, and Myles's mother hugged
him in her arms, sheepskin and all, kissing him, with the tears
streaming down her cheeks, and whispering to him, as though he could
understand their trouble, that they were about to leave their home
forever.

Then Diccon Bowman carried him out into the strangeness of the winter
midnight.

Outside, beyond the frozen moat, where the osiers, stood stark and stiff
in their winter nakedness, was a group of dark figures waiting for them