"No matter, it was one who knew all about it very well," said the dame, who began to fear that, in displaying her triumph of superior information, she had been rather over-communicative. "It must have been the devil, or Randal himself" said Raoul, "for no other mouth is large enough for such a lie.--But hark ye, Dame Gillian, who is he that presses forward next, like a man that scarce sees how he goes?" "Even your angel of grace, my young Squire Damian" said Dame Gillian. "It is impossible!" answered Raoul--"call me blind if thou wilt;-- but I have never seen man so changed in a few weeks--and his attire is flung on him so wildly as if he wore a horse-cloth round him instead of a mantle--What can ail the youth?--he has made a dead pause at the door, as if he saw something on the threshold that debarred his entrance--Saint Hubert, but he looks as if he were elf-stricken!" "You ever thought him such a treasure!" said Gillian; "and now look at him as he stands by the side of a real gentleman, how he stares and trembles as if he were distraught." "I will speak to him," said Raoul, forgetting his lameness, and springing from his elevated station--"I will speak to him; and if he be unwell, I have my lancets and fleams to bleed man as well as brute." "And a fit physician for such a patient," muttered Gillian,--"a dog-leech for a dreamy madman, that neither knows his own disease nor the way to cure it." Meanwhile the old huntsman made his way towards the entrance, before which Damian remained standing, in apparent uncertainty whether he should enter or not, regardless of the crowd around, and at the same time attracting their attention by the singularity of his deportment. Raoul had a private regard for Damiah; for which, perhaps, it was a chief reason, that of late his wife had been in the habit of speaking of him in a tone more disrespectful than she usually applied to handsome young men. Besides, he understood the youth was a second Sir Tristrem in silvan sports by wood and river, and there needed no more to fetter Raoul's soul to him with bands of steel. He saw with great concern his conduct attract general notice, mixed with some ridicule. "He stands," said the town-jester, who had crowded into the gay throng, "before the gate, like Balaam's ass in the Mystery, when the animal sees so much more than can be seen by any one else." A cut from Raoul's ready leash rewarded the felicity of this application, and sent the fool howling off to seek a more favourable audience, for his pleasantry. At the same time Raoul pressed up to Damian, and with an earnestness very different from his usual dry causticity of manner, begged him for God's sake not to make himself the general spectacle, by standing there as if the devil sat on the doorway, but either to enter, or, what might be as becoming, to retire, and make himself more fit in apparel for attending on a solemnity so nearly concerning his house.