score of them besides the three that had gotten their death-warrants. We bound the score with the cords and thongs we had brought with us, and putting them in motion with the sharp heads of our lances, we proceeded rapidly to the foul donjon at Speen, our lord abbat saying that thus far was well, and some of our captives already beginning to say to Sir Alain that they would change banners and fight for King Stephen if his lordship would spare their lives and accept their services. The dark wintry clouds rolled away, and the stars shone out brightly as if in approbation of our enterprise, and in no long while we did see that equable little river the Lambourne, which neither overflows in winter nor shrinks in summer, but is at all seasons the same (its pike be pale in colour, and in taste not to compare with those of Ock), gliding to join our own swift, sweet Kennet at the township of Shaw; and we saw still clearer the swift Kennet gliding before us, on its way from Speen to our abbey walls at Reading and the broad Thamesis. And then, as we hurried on our way, and as the stars shone out with still more brightness, we discovered broken columns and fragments of walls, standing up from the ground like spectres on a heath; and anon we heard the owls hooting to one another among these ancient ruins. And ancient in sooth they were, for the Romans in the days of the Cæsars had built them a city at Spinæ which men do now call Speen, and these dark and fantastically shaped fragments and ruins were all that remained of it; for the men of Newbury, who have ever had a great envy to other townships and a great liking for the property of other men, had levelled most of the Roman walls and had carried away the stones and bricks thereof to enlarge their own town; and people of other townships had helped themselves at Spinæ as though it had been a common quarry. Such fate befalls towns in decay; but such will never befall our glorious abbey at Reading, for the saints and angels have custody thereof, even as we have meetly expressed, in large letters graven upon the left door of our gate-house under the abbey arms, ANGELI TUI CUSTODIANT MUROS EIUS. But I wis it was not on this night that I did think of the renowned Romans, or make these sanctifying reflections. True, I walked in the paths of pensive thought; but it was only to think of John-à-Blount and of the emprise we had in hand. And when we reached the lonely mill on the Kennet, a few bow-shots below Sir Ingelric's castle at Speen, we hid ourselves behind the mill and blew three blasts upon a trumpet, for this was the only signal which John-à-Blount had asked for. "And now," said our lord abbat, telling his beads, "may the saints befriend the brave boy from Maple-Durham. The token of his success will be three corresponding blasts. Let us be motionless and silent until we hear them." For a space the sound of our own brazen instrument floated along the waters, and was given back in echoes by the sleeping hills;