retainer of Hereford's own. There was so
much of fearful peril and misery hovering over her in her husband's
fate, that it was not much wonder her thoughts lingered there more than
on Agnes, and that she was contented to believe as she had spoken, that
she at least was safe.

Night fell on the town of Berwick. Silence and darkness had come on her
brooding wings; the varied excitement of the day was now but a matter of
wondering commune round the many blazing hearths, where the busy crowds
of the morning had now gathered. Night came, with her closing pall, her
softened memories, her sleeping visions, and sad waking dreams. She had
come, alike to the mourned and mourner, the conqueror and his captive,
the happy and the wretched. She had found the Earl of Berwick pacing up
and down his stately chamber, his curtained couch unsought, devising
schemes to lower the haughty pride of the gallant warrior whom he yet
feared. She had looked softly within the room where that warrior lay,
and found him, too, sleepless, but not from the same dark dreams. He
grieved for his sovereign, for the fate of one noble spirit shrined in a
woman's form, and restless and fevered, turned again and again within
his mind how he might save from a yet darker doom the gallant youth his
arms had conquered. And not alone on them did night look down. She sent
her sweet, reviving influence, on the rays of a bright liquid star,
through the narrow casement which gave light to the rude unfurnished
chamber where Sir Nigel Bruce and his attendant lay. They had not torn
that poor faithful child from his side. Hereford's last commands had
been that they should not part them, and there they now lay; and sleep,
balmy sleep had for them descended on the wings of night, hovering over
that humble pallet of straw, when from the curtained couch of power, the
downy bed of luxury, she fled. There they lay; but it was the boy who
lay on the pallet of straw, his head pillowed by the arm of the knight,
who sat on a wooden settle at his side. He had watched for a brief space
those troubled slumbers, but as they grew calmer and calmer, he had
pressed one light kiss on the soft yielding cheek, and then leant his
head on his breast, and he too slept--even in sleep tending one beloved.

And in the dark, close sleeping-chamber within the prison cage of the
noble Countess of Buchan, night too looked pityingly. Sleep indeed was
not there; it had come and gone, for in a troubled slum