CHAPTER III.

"Are ye a man?"

Macbeth.

RAYMOND was as much astounded by the suddenness of his arrest, as if it had not been that very thing of all others which he had most reason to apprehend. Upon the verge of this pit-fall, indeed, he had trod blindfold from the moment of entering Winchester. Treachery had placed him within the eye and the grasp of Flambard, whose policy dogged his steps with never-sleeping espial, and delayed only to fling the net in the hope that, by observing with whom the emissary of De Mowbray held intercourse, some guess might be formed as to the connexions of his haughty master. The moment, however, was now at hand when Raymond was to be rendered subservient to a bolder purpose; and there were at once security and readiness within the four walls of a dungeon.

The space between Nunna Mynstre and the Castle afforded sufficient leisure for a reflection, now too late, upon the extreme likelihood of such an occurrence as his present seizure; as well as an anticipation of its probable results. As to the cause--although his guards sullenly refused all information-even had he been so inapprehensive as not to guess the truth, enough would have been indicated when, within a little distance of his prison-house, they passed the remains of De Waleric, stretched upon a bier, which four men bore slowly along in the same direction.

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Ah, gallant Knight!" said Raymond, internally, "an evil journey was that of yesterday both for thee and me!"

They entered within the Castle-barriers by a barbican or fortified outpost, of great strength, communicating, from its inner portal, by a ponderous drawbridge, over a moat of corresponding depth and breadth, with the western or main-entrance to the whole range of fortifica

tion.

This (we mean the entrance) was a massy gateway, flanked by two square towers, and strengthened also by others of like struc

ture and bulk, occurring at short intervals along the walls.

Of the area within, the Keep, or Donjon, occupied the north-west angle, upon an elevated square of about a hundred feet. It was of prodigious strength and thickness, and only to be approached by a second range of defences, walls, turrets, and ditches, which encompassed it upon the west and south sides, forming an inner ballium or glacis, from which a foe who had penetrated the outward wards might yet be annoyed and repulsed by the garrison. The bridges and gateway which gave ingress to this ballium, were, like those of the first, facing the west; but the main entrance to the Keep required the prisoner and his guards to turn the left-hand angle before it presented itself.

Under different auspices, had the gallant Squire been assured that he was about to enter the strongest fortress in Britain, he would, no doubt, have scanned, with military satisfaction, the fulness and ingenuity of defence displayed by the whole structure. He would have admired the height and massiveness of its walls and towers the well-ordered disposition of its

approaches; the depth of its vast fosses, running a hundred feet below the base of the Keep; and the gigantic proportions of that huge building itself, flanked with a massy tower at every angle, and with a fifth, lowering over the entrance, which, with the added terrors of its yawning graff-its projecting machicolation for the pouring down of missiles and melted ore— its tremendous portcullis, and enormous gates of trebled oak, seemed to frown defiance and scorn upon a besieger.

But Raymond's "planet-ascendant" of the hour shed no influence favourable to such speculation; and we suspect that in the revulsion of feeling natural to one who, from the day-dream of early passion is suddenly wrenched into the harsh world of realities, revulsion, too, deepened by the insolence of his conductors and the hootings of the mob, he was utterly forgetful of all military association. It is not probable that he was alive even to the honour of being incarcerated in the same prison-nay, it might be in the same dungeon, where, at no very remote day, an archbishop had ceased to breathe and suffer. We allude to the last of the Saxon

Primates, Stigand of Canterbury, immured in that grim fortress by William the Conqueror, until the Conqueror's conqueror came to his relief.

After some delay in the court of guard, Raymond was consigned to a warder, in whose hand a lighted lamp indicated the nature of his further route. From the north-east tower, a descent of steps (the ruins were visible not many years ago) brought them into a narrow passage which led to the dungeons beneath. Long, low, and dark was this corridor of the mansion of Tyranny, exhibiting, at intervals, on either side, the low-browed entrances to those chambers of misery of which it was the fitting approach. At one of these the warder stopped, directing upon its blackened oak and ponderous fastenings the feeble glimmer of his lamp, and uttering, in no silver tones, the single word, “Behold!"

Raymond's sagacity was at fault; but, in the next instant, another voice, deeper and sterner, murmured with like brevity, a monosyllable which seemed half inquiry-half exclamation, "This?"

"This," answered the Warder. It was then