that churls and yeomen wax so presumptuous as even to lay leaguer
before castles, and that clowns and swineherds send defiances to nobles,
since men-at-arms have turned sick men's nurses, and Free Companions are
grown keepers of dying folk's curtains, when the castle is about to be
assailed.--To the battlements, ye loitering villains!" he exclaimed,
raising his stentorian voice till the arches around rung again, "to the
battlements, or I will splinter your bones with this truncheon!"

The men sulkily replied, "that they desired nothing better than to go to
the battlements, providing Front-de-Boeuf would bear them out with their
master, who had commanded them to tend the dying man."

"The dying man, knaves!" rejoined the Baron; "I promise thee we shall
all be dying men an we stand not to it the more stoutly. But I
will relieve the guard upon this caitiff companion of yours.--Here,
Urfried--hag--fiend of a Saxon witch--hearest me not?--tend me this
bedridden fellow since he must needs be tended, whilst these knaves
use their weapons.--Here be two arblasts, comrades, with windlaces and
quarrells [34]--to the barbican with you, and see you drive each bolt
through a Saxon brain."

The men, who, like most of their description, were fond of enterprise
and detested inaction, went joyfully to the scene of danger as they were
commanded, and thus the charge of Ivanhoe was transferred to Urfried,
or Ulrica. But she, whose brain was burning with remembrance of injuries
and with hopes of vengeance, was readily induced to devolve upon Rebecca
the care of her patient.

CHAPTER XXIX

Ascend the watch-tower yonder, valiant soldier,
Look on the field, and say how goes the battle.
--Schiller's Maid of Orleans

A moment of peril is often also a moment of open-hearted kindness and
affection. We are thrown off our guard by the general agitation of our
feelings, and betray the intensity of those, which, at more tranquil
periods, our prudence at least conceals, if it cannot altogether
suppress them. In finding herself once more by the side of Ivanhoe,
Rebecca was astonished at the keen sensation of pleasure which she
experienced, even at a time when all around them both was danger, if not
despair. As she felt his pulse, and enquired after his health, there was
a softness in her touch and in her accents implying a kinder interest
than she would herself have been pleased to have voluntarily expressed.
Her voice falter