Now came the King’s call to his vassals, great and small, to serve in the Scottish war; and my father was gay with the thought of service under his sovereign’s banner,—service that might place the name and fame of Mountjoy high in his master’s favor, and show what manner of man and subject it was whom the Gray Wolf would rob of his lands. A week from that morning my mother had in hand a letter brought by a courier from the King’s army and bearing my father’s greetings. They were well on their way to the north, and believed the Scots would soon have reason to repent them of their folly. Father had been given a post in the advance guard, and was in high feather over rejoining some of his comrades of earlier years. On the same day, and from another source, we had news that the Gray Wolf was delayed at Teramore by an illness,—the same that had plagued him at times since his campaigns in the Holy Land, but that he had sent word to the King that he would overtake the banners ere they reached the Scottish border. At seven of the next morning, I stood with Old Marvin by the drawbridge wheel. He had seen to its lowering, and a wain-load of wheat from the grange at the Wallfield was coming slowly into the courtyard. Suddenly I espied a body of horsemen approaching at a trot half a mile away, at a bend on the wooded road from Mannerley. With pointing finger, I guided the eyes of Marvin; and for half a minute we both stood watching the riders without a word. They were soon lost behind the trees, but our old archer, with his hand on the wheel, now shifted his looks to the road where it came out of the forest, a scant bowshot below us. Now we could hear the hoofbeats and once and again the ring of steel. This could be no friendly call from our neighboring knights and squires so early in the day. Besides, the loyal men of the whole region were with the King’s banner. Had the horsemen come by the Teramore road, our thoughts would have flown at once to the Old Wolf and his designs, and the drawbridge had gone up in a twinkling; but these came from Mannerley; and I knew well that the good lady of Mannerley had days since sent her small quota of knights and men-at-arms to Lincoln. We had not long to wonder, for now the column came from the wood at a swinging trot, and with a tall, gray-bearded knight at its head came forward swiftly toward the open gate. Marvin stayed his hand no longer. I seized the crank with him; and we swiftly turned it. We drew the bridge to a slant, half way to the upright and barely in time to halt those riders on the yonder side of the moat. “I know thee, my Lord Carleton,” shouted Marvin, “what would’st thou at Mountjoy? Dost think we keep no watch and ward?” The Old Wolf (for verily he was the leader of the horsemen) shouted back to us in tones that made my ear drums ache: