Hugh indeed it was, though worn almost to a skeleton, and looking like death. One arm was extended, and blood was oozing from a vein that had evidently been recently opened. A number of other scars plainly showed how frequently this operation had been repeated. His eyes, though half open, seemed to take in no impression from without. He was cold and almost pulseless. Amalric, bending over him and feeling his heart, said between his clenched teeth,-- "We are only just in time!" They stanched the wound. They forced strong spirit down his throat. They chafed his cold limbs, and finding warm garments, left behind by the fugitives in their hasty flight, they wrapped him in them, and set light to the fire upon the hearth, and laid him down in front of it to get the full heat of the blaze. In moving him, they found that he had been chained by one ankle to the wall, and they had to file through the fetter before they could free him, their hearts meantime swelling with indignation and fury. "If we can but lay hands on those miscreants!" muttered Amalric between his teeth. All this while Hugh lay lifeless and unconscious, although his pulses still beat faintly. When he had for the third time swallowed the cordial forced upon him by Leofric, he slowly opened his eyes, at first with shrinking and horror in them, which changed gradually to great wonder and joy. "Amalric!" he said faintly, as though speaking in a dream--"Leofric! Heaven send this be not another dream!" And having so said he put out his hand, as if to assure himself by touch of the presence of friends; and after having so done he once more lost consciousness, the very shock of joy being too much for his weakened frame. CHAPTER XII. _WINTER DAYS WITHIN THE CASTLE._ All Oxford was thrown into excitement by the news. Hugh le Barbier, whose disappearance after the jousting in Beaumont meadows two months before had created a certain stir in some quarters, had now been found in fetters in the Magician's Tower, as people sometimes called it, and had been carried off to the Castle for security by the Constable. It was in all mouths that the foreign magician, whose doings and wonders had attracted no small notice during the Fair of St. Frideswyde, was none other than the Italian youth Tito Balzani, who had grown up in their midst, and had therefore an intimate knowledge of those who consulted him. It was further said that both he and Roger de Horn had been in the plot for abducting and imprisoning the missing man, and that they were now being searched for all through the neighbouring forests, to which they had most likely fled for safety so soon as they found themselves discovered. Jack Dugdale was forward to tell the tale to the gaping throng who surrounded him whenever he appeared in the streets.