He then awoke the squire who slept at the door of his chamber, and ordered horses to be saddled and men to be mounted; and, just as morning began to dawn and the song of the nightingale ceased, and the antlers of the deer stirred above the fern, and the red in the east heralded the rise of the sun, the king, having mounted, left the castle and rode away through the park of Windsor, to which he was never to return. “Now,” soliloquised he, “let mine enemies tremble, for I will oppose guile to guile and force to force. Revenge is sweet, and revenge, at least, I may enjoy; and even if Fate do her worst I am prepared. Rather than be their slave I will commit my soul to God and my body to St. Wulstan.” CHAPTER XIX CHAS-CHATEIL On the summit of a hill looking over the vale of the Kennet stood the castle of Chas-Chateil, surrounded by a park well wooded, and stocked with deer and beasts of game. It had been built in the reign of Stephen by Henry de Moreville, a great baron who flourished in the twelfth century and bore an eagle on his shield, after his return from the Holy Land; and as the Morevilles were favourites with the second Henry, it escaped destruction during the time when the politic king razed so many feudal fortresses to the ground. Originally it was an ordinary Norman castle, consisting of a basecourt, the sides of the walls being fortified with angles, towers, buttresses, battlements, and hornworks. But it was now a far prouder and more magnificent edifice--a place which, if well garrisoned and provisioned, might, before the invention of cannon, have held out long against a besieging army.