we came to the long point of rock that stretches from
our island towards the mainland, and here my lord stopped. "If we had a
boat," he said, trembling I think with eagerness; then, pulling his grey
beard, he whispered to himself only, "Who can fight against the
Church,--who will not fight?" Then turned he again and went on along the
shore; and thus late in the evening we came to a solitary beech which
rose from out a hollow in the hills. Great formless mounds of white lay
near, the fallen ones who had left this old tree lonely; and leaning
against this solitary trunk we passed our night, until the coming of a
glorious dawning fell on our faces as they lay against the smooth
beech-bark, and awakened us early--I think earlier than any of the
Bishop's men awakened that morning, for though we waited to eat we heard
no sound of their pursuing until nearly the noon-time; then from far off
came the familiar thud of horses' hoofs and the crisp jingle of the
bridle-reins, in the far-carrying, cold, morning air.

It was the next day after this, when my Lord Rolf seemed to hesitate,
walking by himself, telling even me nothing, and when it came to the
sunset and a cold yellow edged the dark sky over the sea, and the
snow-drifts looked ghostly at any distance, he spoke to me after many
trials with himself.

"Do you know where we are?"

"No," I said.

"Do you know that by to-morrow at noon we shall have returned?"

I looked at him startled.

"Returned to the hall?"

"Yes," he said; "we shall have been round the island."

"And when we shall have returned?" I asked.

My lord was silent. It was not at noon the next day but toward the dusk
when the darkening trees began to seem familiar, and the coast-line
stretched in remembered curves, and the ripples along the icy beach
seemed home-like. In the dusk, as we plodded crouching behind a drift of
snow that ran along the hillside, there rose before us something gaunt
and white and very tall and very still in the valley below us, and we
stopped, for we saw it was a building: it seemed a keep of the old days
that they build no more now. So we stood looking, trying to make out any
light near in the dark evening. Suddenly my lord sighed, and, falling
forward on his knees, he put his face down in the snow, and when I bent
and whispered to him he only answered, "They have burnt it, but the old
keep would not burn." It was our own hall that we had come back to. So,
the next morning we