f the castle.

The three leaders of the banditti and the men who had planned and
carried out the outrage, Norman knights,--Front-de-Boeuf, the brutal
owner of the castle; Maurice de Bracy, a free-lance, who sought to wed
the Lady Rowena by force and so had arranged the attack, and Brian de
[v]Bois-Guilbert, a distinguished member of the famous order of
[v]Knights Templar,--had a short discussion together and then
separated. Front-de-Boeuf immediately sought the apartment where Isaac
of York tremblingly awaited his fate.

The Jew had been hastily thrown into a dungeon-vault of the castle, the
floor of which was deep beneath the level of the earth, and very damp,
being lower than the moat itself. The only light was received through
one or two loop-holes far above the reach of the captive's hand. These
[v]apertures admitted, even at midday, only a dim and uncertain light,
which was changed for utter darkness long before the rest of the castle
had lost the blessing of day. Chains and shackles, which had been the
portion of former captives, hung rusted and empty on the walls of the
prison, and in the rings of one of these sets of fetters there remained
two moldering bones which seemed those of the human leg.

At one end of this ghastly apartment was a large fire-grate, over the
top of which were stretched some transverse iron bars, half devoured
with rust.

The whole appearance of the dungeon might have appalled a stouter heart
than that of Isaac, who, nevertheless, was more composed under the
imminent pressure of danger than he had seemed to be while affected by
terrors of which the cause was as yet remote and [v]contingent. It was
not the first time that Isaac had been placed in circumstances so
dangerous. He had, therefore, experience to guide him, as well as a hope
that he might again be delivered from the peril.

The Jew remained without altering his position for nearly three hours,
at the end of which time steps were heard on the dungeon stair. The
bolts screamed as they were withdrawn, the hinges creaked as the wicket
opened, and Reginald Front-de-Boeuf, followed by two Saracen slaves of
the Templar, entered the prison.

Front-de-Boeuf, a tall and strong man, whose life had been spent in
public war or in private feuds and broils and who had hesitated at no
means of extending his [v]feudal power, had features corresponding to
his character, and which strongly expressed the fiercer and more evil
passions of the m