never were tidings more welcome than these to the half-famished
army, encamped upon the banks of the Ebro, on the same ground on
which, in after years, English valour was once more to turn to
flight a usurping King of Spain.






CHAPTER IV



The moon was at her height, and shone full into the half-opened
tent of Sir Reginald Lynwood. At the further end, quite in
darkness, the Knight, bare-headed, and rosary in hand, knelt
before the dark-robed figure of a confessor, while at a short
distance lay, on a couch of deer-skins, the sleeping Leonard
Ashton. Before the looped-up curtain that formed the door was
Gaston d'Aubricour, on one knee, close to a huge torch of pine-
wood fixed in the earth, examining by its flaring smoky light
into the state of his master's armour, proving every joint with
a small hammer. Near him, Eustace, with the help of John Ingram,
the stalwart yeoman, was fastening his charge, the pennon, to a
mighty lance of the toughest ash-wood, and often looking forth on
the white tents on which the moonbeams shed their pale, tranquil
light. There was much to impress a mind like his, in the scene
before him: the unearthly moonlight, the few glimmering stars,
the sky--whose southern clearness and brightness were, to his