granaries which
were contained in low, wooden buildings projecting from the wall.
Neither he nor his friends, nor even the men-at-arms, noticed them, or
if they did, imagined them in the darkness to be but the stones and
other weights generally collected there, and used to supply the engines
on the wails.

With the exception of the sentries and the men employed by Nigel, all
the garrison had assembled in the hall of the keep for their evening
meal, the recollection of whose frugality they determined to banish by
the jest and song; there were in consequence none about the courts, and
therefore that dark forms were continually hovering about beneath the
deep shadows of the walls, increasing the size of the stacks, remained
wholly undiscovered.

Agnes had entered the church by a covered passage, which united the keep
to its inner wall, and thence by a gallery through the wall itself,
dimly lighted by loopholes, to the edifice, whose southern side was
formed by this same wall. It was therefore, though in reality situated
within the ballium or outer court, nearer by many hundred yards to the
dwelling of the baron than to the castle walls, its granaries, towers,
etc. This outward ballium indeed was a very large space, giving the
appearance of a closely-built village or town, from the number of low
wooden and thatched-roofed dwellings, which on either side of the large
open space before the great gate were congregated together. This account
may, we fear at such a moment, seem somewhat out of place, but events in
the sequel compel us to be thus particular. A space about half a mile
square surrounded the church, and this position, when visited, by Sir
Nigel at nine o'clock, was quiet and deserted; indeed there was very
much less confusion and other evidences of disquiet within the dwellings
than was now usual, and this circumstance perhaps heightened the calm
which, as we have said, had settled on Sir Nigel's mind.

There was silence within that little sacred edifice, the silence of
emotion; for not one could gaze upon that young fair girl, could think
of that devoted spirit, which at such a time preferred to unite her fate
with a beloved one than seek safety and freedom in flight, without being
conscious of a strange swelling of the heart and unwonted moisture in
the eye; and there was that in the expression of the beautiful features
of Nigel Bruce none could remark unmoved. He was so young, so gifted, so
strangely uniting t