More didn't I, but I was. No chance of him having the
same luck."

He went to the window, and the first thing he saw was the dead horse
being dragged towards the gate-way, where it was left to wait till the
bridge should be lowered again.

"Poor thing! How roughly they are using it!" he thought. "Can't feel,
though, now."

Then his attention was taken up by seeing old Jenk with his white hair
and beard streaming, as he tottered here and there in the sunshine,
looking excited and without his weapon.

"Why, they've taken the sword away from the poor old fellow," thought
Roy. "How absurd! It will make him half-mad, if it hasn't done so
already."

But in a few moments the old man sat down on the pedestal of the
sun-dial, and his head drooped on his breast.

Beyond him, just visible at the foot of the slope and outside the
stables, Roy could see the Roundhead trooper, bareheaded and stripped to
his breeches and shirt, rolling up his shirt-sleeves and beginning to
clean his horse's harness. But something which seemed to be more
important took the boy's attention the next moment, and that was the
figure of Master Pawson upon the ramparts, walking up and down in the
sunshine, this being the first time he had been visible by daylight
since the general's stern words.

"Taking advantage of his being away," thought Roy; and he was about to
shrink back to avoid being seen, but his pride forbade that, and he
leaned out and amused himself by parting the thick growth of old ivy,
and thinking how easily he could get down into the court if he liked.

"And that wretch could climb up while I'm asleep and kill me if he
liked," he thought, with a slight shudder, which he laughed off the next
moment as folly.

Dinner was announced in due time, and he was half-disposed not to go;
but he joined the officers, and obtained permission from the captain to
visit his mother's room to tea.

"Oh, yes," said that officer, quietly. "I do not wish to be too hard
upon you, Royland, only I cannot have you conspiring with your men to
retake the castle now we seem weak."

So Roy spent a pleasant evening with his mother, and in good time
returned to his own room, heard the sentry placed outside, and then sat
in the summer evening, trying to see the men stationed opposite, and
upon the towers, from his open window.

It was a very dark night, hot and promising a thunderstorm, the air
feeling so close that, when at last Roy retired, he lef