Intent now on escaping, and preserving both his life and his _incognito_, Gray fought with the vigour of despair. Wrenching a partizan from a Waloon soldier, he struck right and left to hew a passage through his assailants. He knocked down Douglas of Pompherston, and severely wounded two of the night watch, by piercing their cuirasses of boiled bull-hide; but being pressed furiously by their comrades, he was soon beaten to the ground, disarmed, dragged away through the streets, and carried to the castle of Bommel, where he was thrust into a common dungeon and left to his own reflections, which were neither very lucid nor lively. His horses, his leathern mail or portmanteau, and papers became the spoil of the Douglases; his rich cassock coat, the gift of Duke Arnold, and the ring which he was commissioned by Katharine, the duchess of Gueldres, to convey to the young king, her future son-in-law, became the prey of James Achanna, who openly appropriated and wore both, and whom the earl sent to Messire Jacques de Lalain, the Dyck Graf, to request that Gray, "as a notorious outlaw and consorter with Ludwig of Endhoven, should be broken alive upon the wheel, by noon next day." All his papers were gone; thus he could afford no written or satisfactory account of himself, and obstinately refused to say what object brought him into conflict with Achanna, as he was determined that the name of Murielle--his wife--should not be compromised, even in a foreign country. It was soon known and proved by the evidence of the officious and now terrified keeper of the hostelry, at which he lately lodged, that he had assumed at times, if not constantly, the dress and character of a Muscovite merchant. "For what reason?" asked De Lalain; but Gray declined to answer. Was he a spy of Philip of Burgundy, or of Charles of France? was the next surmise. But the latter at that time had no thought of war or politics, and was forgetting everything in the arms of Agnes Soreau (commonly called Sorel), a beautiful demoiselle of Touraine. The fact of disguise looked very suspicious, but none knew exactly of what. Again Douglas urged that he should be executed without delay; but grief and despair threw Gray into a burning fever, "ane het sicknesse," the abbot, his kinsman terms it; so the Dyck Graf declined to be precipitate, but kept him a close prisoner, and on the day after this affair, the earl of Douglas, with all his retinue, accompanied by the duke of Albany, left Bommel, and took the road by Ameldroyen, towards the frontier of France. CHAPTER XXXIX. A GLANCE AT HISTORY. Visions of the days departed, Shadowy phantoms fill my brain; They who live in history only, Seem to walk the earth again. LONGFELLOW. The spring of 1443 was ripening into summer around the Scottish capital. The green corn was sprouting in the fields; the April gowans and the budding whins made gay the upland slopes and braes.