Fortunately, as he deemed it, at that very instant he heard many steps
rapidly approaching, and his own name called aloud by the voice of the
king's body-squire.

"Hark! Edward summons me," he said, with a feeling of reprieve.
"Farewell, dear Sibyll, farewell for a brief while,--we shall meet
anon."

At this time they were standing in that part of the rampart walk which
is now backed by the barracks of a modern soldiery, and before which,
on the other side of the moat, lay a space that had seemed solitary
and deserted; but as Hastings, in speaking his adieu, hurriedly
pressed his lips on Sibyll's forehead, from a tavern without the
fortress, and opposite the spot on which they stood, suddenly sallied
a disorderly troop of half-drunken soldiers, with a gang of the
wretched women that always continue the classic associations of a
false Venus with a brutal Mars; and the last words of Hastings were
scarcely spoken, before a loud laugh startled both himself and Sibyll,
and a shudder came over her when she beheld the tinsel robes of the
tymbesteres glittering in the sun, and heard their leader sing, as she
darted from the arms of a reeling soldier,--

"Ha! death to the dove
Is the falcon's love.
Oh, sharp is the kiss of the falcon's beak!"