"She gazed down the line of the yew-trees, and watched how, as he went
for the most part with a firm step, he yet shrank somewhat from the
shadows of the yews; his long brown hair flowing downward, swayed with
him as he walked; and the golden threads interwoven with it, as the
fashion was with the warriors in those days, sparkled out from among it
now and then; and the faint, far-off moonlight lit up the waves of his
mail-coat; he walked fast, and was disappearing in the shadows of the
trees near the moat, but turned before he was quite lost in them, and
waved his ungauntletted hand; then she heard the challenge of the warder,
the falling of the drawbridge, the swing of the heavy wicket-gate on its
hinges; and, into the brightening lights, and deepening shadows of the
moonlight he went from her sight; and she left the porch and went to the
chapel, all that night praying earnestly there.

"But he came not back again all the next day, and Ella wandered about
that house pale, and fretting her heart away; so when night came and the
moon, she arrayed herself in that same raiment that she had worn on the
night before, and went toward the river and the red pike.

"The broad moon shone right over it by the time she came to the river;
the pike rose up from the other side, and she thought at first that she
would have to go back again, cross over the bridge, and so get to it;
but, glancing down on the river just as she turned, she saw a little boat
fairly gilt and painted, and with a long slender paddle in it, lying on
the water, stretching out its silken painter as the stream drew it
downwards, she entered it, and taking the paddle made for the other side;
the moon meanwhile turning the eddies to silver over the dark green
water: she landed beneath the shadow of that great pile of sandstone,
where the grass grew green, and the flowers sprung fair right up to the
foot of the bare barren rock; it was cut in many steps till it reached