And kissing him tenderly, she left him, half slumbering in his quiet corner, and slipped quietly out of the castle, while the flames ever leaped higher on the hill, and the distant roar of voices grew every moment wilder. To venture to the scene of the tumult was impossible. All the men it was safe to spare from the castle were already there, doing, she well knew, their very utmost to quell the fury of the flames and drive back the foe. But the enemy was in possession, and with a bitter pang she was forced to realise that the little church, in which she and Percival had vowed their vows of love and so often prayed together, and without whose walls her beloved parents lay sleeping, was doomed to swift destruction. Her feet sped with a swiftness borne of love towards the bridge, which swung to and fro across the raging, foaming waters, as though each moment it must be dashed by the furious wind into a thousand pieces. Hardly could she keep her footing along the narrow roadway, but the bridge was reached at last, and she bravely walked half-way across it, trembling and giddy in the darkness; then--oh, horror!--in the dim, fast-decreasing light, she suddenly beheld at her very feet a black chasm, where, in the fury of the storm, several boards had been dashed from the footway at the very centre of the bridge, leaving a gap far too wide for her to pass, and for Percival barely possible by a skilful leap. A cold shiver passed through her frame as she saw the deadly danger he must run were he to cross alone later in the evening, in yet deeper darkness. She gazed around--no human being stirred in the dim distance. She called, but no voice answered. All were watching, far away on the hillside, with fascinated eyes those lurid flames, which now, in face of this new danger to her beloved, Primrose forgot utterly. She crept back to the bank, and searched eagerly up and down in the darkness for a boat or raft--anything by means of which she could row herself across the torrent and bring back Percival in safety. But there was no raft, however rude, in sight. The boat-house was locked, and the boatman, Jack's successor, was far away on the hillside, as Primrose knew, one of the chosen band for the defence of the ill-fated church. She must stay on the bridge and watch for Percival--it was all she could do--and in her anxiety for him the stormy wind and driving rain were trifles she hardly noticed as she eagerly strained her eyes across the swaying bridge into the blackness beyond, to catch the first glimpse of his figure. And as the long moments dragged themselves away, and she remained a lonely sentinel in the ever-gathering gloom of night, a vision came to her like those of her childish dreams--a vision of King Arthur's knights of old, pacing to and fro on their brave palfreys along the winding road by the riverside, and this time they rode stately and slow, and at their head, on snow-white steed,