“Not on a moonless night, and especially if he knew the moment when the sentry had just passed overhead and therefore would not soon return. ’Tis a desperate thing, I own; but believe me, Sir Richard, we shall not fail. Already I see the way to take the rope and our messages to Wilfrid in his cell. There is a group of trees which in the last score of years while the castle has been little used as a stronghold, has been allowed to grow on the hither side of the moat, just opposite the tower. There we will hide and do our part in the venture. To-morrow night will be moonless. What sayest thou?” ———— The next day at noon, soon after Bardolph of the Broken Nose had ridden away from Kimberley on some necessary errand, a stout old monk, in the flowing robe of his order, with hood and cowl closely drawn about his face, and bearing a basket on his arm, appeared at the gate of Kimberley. He wished to see the prisoner, Wilfrid, and to bear to him the consolations of religion and also some articles of food which friends of his had prepared. The clerkly youth who seemed in authority in the absence of the bailiff was much in doubt as to the wisdom of permitting any such entry, and, indeed, at first refused. But the good monk fairly overwhelmed him with quotations from the Scripture and the writings of the Holy Fathers relative to his duty to visit those who were sick or in prison, and quoted so many Latin texts that the youth was soon fairly bewildered and overcome. Stipulating only that the basket be left below, since the bailiff had given strict orders that no food was to be taken to the prisoner by any save himself, he led the way up the tower stairs, and unlocking the heavy oaken door, admitted the monk to the room where Birkenhead was confined. In another quarter of an hour the monk had departed as he came, taking up his basket again at the gateway and leaving with the chatelaine his heartiest blessing. To me, who had been anxiously watching from one of the village houses, a furlong from the walls, it seemed that he walked with much firmer and more vigorous step as he returned o’er the drawbridge than he had when first he crossed it. But if this were so, none in the castle seemed to remark it—at any rate the monk’s departure was not interrupted, and he passed out of the village, looking neither to the right nor the left. Soon after, I followed and overtook him after he had entered a thick copse of yew and hazel half a mile away. Beneath that leafy screen, Cedric flung off the monkish gown and hood, dropped the basket on the ground, and stood gazing at it gloomily. “Sir Richard,” he said at length, “Wilfrid of Birkenhead hath been for three days close shut in that tower room, and no least morsel of food hath been given him. Bardolph verily means to compass his death by starving.”