she
sometimes lay on her bed; sometimes raged up and down the room, heaping
violent words on the head of the tardy cowardly German; sometimes
talking of loosing Skywing to show they were in the castle and cognisant
of what was going on; but it was not certain that Skywing, with the lion
rampant on his hood, would fly down to the besiegers, so that she would
only be lost.

Eleanor, by the very need of soothing her sister, was enabled to be more
tranquil. Besides, there was pleasure in the knowledge that Sigismund
had come after her, and there was imagination enough in her nature to
trust to the true knight daring any amount of dragons in his lady's
cause. And the lady always had to be patient.

CHAPTER 11. FETTERS BROKEN

Then long and loud the victor shout
From turret and from tower rang out;
The rugged walls replied.
SCOTT, Lord of the Isles.

'Sir, I have something to show you.'

It was the early twilight of a summer's morning when Ringan crept up to
the shelter of pine branches under which George Douglas was sleeping,
after hotly opposing Gebhardt, who had nearly persuaded his master that
retreat was inevitable, unless he meant to be deserted by more than half
his men.

George sat up. 'Anent the ladies?' he said.

Ringan bowed his head, with an air of mystery and George doubted no
longer, but let him lead the way, keeping among the brushwood to the
foot of the quarry whence the castle had been built. It had once been
absolutely precipitous, no doubt, but the stone was of a soft quality,
on which weather told: ivy and creepers had grown on it, and Ringan
pointed to what to dwellers on plains might have seemed impracticable,
but to those who had bird's-nested on the crags of Tantallon had quite a
different appearance. True, there was castle wall and turret above, but
on this, the weather side, there had likewise been a slight crumbling,
which had been neglected, perhaps from over security, perhaps on account
of the extreme difficulty of repairing, where there was the merest ledge
for foothold above the precipitous quarry; indeed, the condition of the
place might never even have been perceived by the inhabitants, as there
were no traces of the place below having been frequented.

'Tis a mere staircase as far as the foot of the walls compared with the
Guillemot's crag,' observed Ringan.

'And a man with a heart and a foot could be up the wall in the corner
where the i