first self again, and merrier than common with her father, to whom, as
far as my knowledge went, she said not a word about the meeting in the
crypt of St. Martin's chapel, though to me she had spoken so freely. This
gave me some hope; but when I would have tried to ask her a question, she
only gazed at me in a manner that abashed me, and turned off to toy with
her jackanapes. Whereby I went to my bed perplexed, and with a heavy
heart, as one that was not yet conversant with the ways of women--nay,
nor ever, in my secular life, have I understood what they would be at.
Happier had it been for my temporal life if I had been wiser in woman's
ways. But commonly, when we have learned a lesson, the lore comes too
late.

Next day my master had business at the castle with a certain lord, and
took me thither to help in carrying his wares. This castle was a place
that I loved well, it is so old, having first been builded when the
Romans were lords of the land; and is so great and strong that our
bishop's castle of St. Andrews seems but a cottage compared to it. From
the hill-top there is a wide prospect over the tower and the valley of
the Vienne, which I liked to gaze upon. My master, then, went in by the
drawbridge, high above the moat, which is so deep that, I trow, no foeman
could fill it up and cross it to assail the walls. My master, in limping
up the hill, had wearied himself, but soon passed into the castle through
the gateway of the bell-tower, as they call it, while I waited for him on
the further end of the bridge, idly dropping morsels of bread to the
swans that swam in the moat below.

On the drawbridge, standing sentinel, was a French man-at-arms, a young
man of my own age, armed with a long fauchard, which we call a bill or
halberd, a weapon not unlike the Lochaber axes of the Highlandmen. Other
soldiers, French, Scottish, Spaniards, Germans, a mixed company, were