The castle was surrounded almost to its walls by the forest of ancient oaks, spreading in all directions, and becoming denser and more wild as it stretched miles away. And here were the deer, numerous and fat, that well supplied the larder for Sir Walter's board, or cooled their sides amid the rankly growing brake and ferns, where naught troubled the intense silence of the dusky aisles save the whir of the pheasant, or the foot of the hare, light as the leaf dropping from the green arch overhead. Sir Walter was in the forest this day, and with him were his three goodly sons, besides several retainers. The notes of the horn had come faintly to the castle now and again, as they pursued the chase; and up in her apartments Anne, the seventeen-year-old wife of Sir Walter's youngest son, sat watching for a first glimpse of the returning huntsmen. Upon her knees lay an open volume, bound in white vellum, and with clasps of pearl. It was richly illuminated, every page presenting a picture gorgeous with color, and it was a carefully narrated story of travel and adventure in that far-away country across the ocean for which she and her young husband were soon to set sail. She paused over one of the illustrations, and gazed at it long and earnestly, while her agate-gray eyes grew wide, and became filled with consternation. It was the picture of an Indian chief, in all the formidable toggery of war dress and paint; and his fierceness of mien brought to her young heart a hitherto unknown dread and terror. The golden of the sun was turning to rose, when a clatter of hoofs and the sound of men's voices drew her eyes toward the courtyard below. Resting her dimpled arms upon the rough stone of the window-ledge, she leaned over and smiled down into the upturned face of her twenty-two-year-old husband, whose dark eyes sought her casement ere he dismounted from his tired horse, which the esquire at its head had now little need to hold. He waved his hand to her, while a bright smile illumined his grave face, and she responded by blowing him a kiss from the tips of her taper fingers. The old Baronet, who had been the first to dismount, looked up as well, and shook his hunting spear at her. "Ah, rogue!" he called out. "Wait till I catch thee! With never a kiss to spare thy old father!" Her fresh young laugh rang out gayly as she retorted, "But I have many an one, if you choose, good sir, as surely you wot right well." "'T is a dear child,--a sweet lass, Jack," the old man said to his youngest son as the two entered the castle side by side. "My heart misgives me at thought of her going to the far-off heathen country, amongst savages and wild beasts; for, alack, who can tell what may befall there?" Behind them followed Leicester, Sir Walter's eldest son, and beside him was young Will,--in his boyhood a page, and now the heir's special esquire. Walter, the next son, came after them, and then the retainers.