Hildebrand, following her eye, glanced anxiously at the door. Listening a moment, he distinctly heard the tread of footsteps, and some voices, as it seemed to him, conversing in whispers. He had hardly time to seize the hilt of his rapier, when the door was thrown open, and two cavaliers, with their rapiers already drawn, sprang into the room. The light of the fire, which the draught through the open door had somewhat brightened, enabled Hildebrand to distinguish their faces; and, to his surprise, he recognised in the foremost cavalier an old and unexpected enemy:--it was Don Felix di Corva. CHAPTER VIII. Although Dame Shedlock had fully explained to Zedekiah and Abigail the mystery of Sir Walter Raleigh’s pipe, it must not be supposed that those two individuals were satisfied, by this unsupported testimony of their mistress, that the said pipe was merely a harmless source of recreation, and no way allied to the powers and elements of the infernal regions. They forbore to alarm the neighbourhood, and, to the eye of their mistress, appeared to award her explanation implicit credence; but their belief that the pipe was Sir Walter’s familiar demon, by means of which he corresponded with Lucifer, was unshaken, and too firmly rooted in their minds to be easily removed. Zedekiah, indeed, did not care much, after his first fright had subsided, whether it were true or not, so long as he was beyond Sir Walter’s reach; but Abigail’s horror of the Evil One was more inveterate. No sooner had Dame Shedlock retired, than she made Zedekiah sensible, by a few hurried words, how deeply this horror was now moving her, and implored him to lend his aid towards blocking the Enemy out. There was but one way, in her opinion, in which the blocking out could be effected; and this was by procuring a horseshoe, and nailing it, with the fore-part upwards, on the outside of the kitchen-door. Without ever having been suspected of sorcery, she had the reputation of being deeply versed in the science of charms, as her whole life, in private, was one uninterrupted precaution against bad luck and witches; and, therefore, Zedekiah readily believed that this contrivance would be fully adequate to the purpose in view, and constitute a barrier that the devil could not pass. There was one bar to its success, however, that he thought calculated to cause them some inconvenience; and this was, that they had no horseshoe. “Be that all thou canst say?” asked Abigail, in answer to this objection of the man-of-all-work. “Doth thy horse run barefoot, then?” “Scoff not, woman!” replied Zedekiah; “for the beast hath in nothing offended thee. Verily, he is shod complete.” “Then, we will straight unshoe him,” returned Abigail. “Better a lazy beast should go barefoot, than harm should come to any Christian folk.”