At length the door opened and an old man appeared before him. “What do you want?” he demanded brusquely of the traveller. “If you ask hospitality, you will not be refused; but if you ask to see my master, the Earl of Northumberland, you cannot see him.” “It is he whom I wish to see,” replied the stranger. The old domestic contracted his white eyebrows. “That cannot be. Since the death of his father he sees nobody.” “The old Count of Northumberland dead!” replied Sir Walsh (for it was he). “Alas! yes, for an entire year. We buried him at Alnwick,” answered the old servant, wiping away a tear. “Go to your master,” replied Sir Walsh,” and tell him that some one asks to see him on the part of the king. I will wait for you here.” “On the part of the king!” replied the old servant. “On the part of the king! That will make a difference, I think, and I do not want you to stay here. Follow me.” After fastening the horse to one of the iron rings which were fixed in the wall of the inner court, he led Sir Walsh into the castle. They crossed long courts, then entered magnificent galleries, where they saw arranged, between the Gothic arches which separated the vast and deeply-embrasured windows, the richest armorial trophies of all ages. Lances, longbows, and javelins filled up the interstices. Shields and bucklers, borne in battle by the ancestors of the noble earl, were eating away with rust, and the festoons of spider-webs which hung from the huge antlers of stag and deer bore witness to the neglect and indifference of the master of the castle. Sir Walsh, as he passed along, regarded all these things with an admiration mingled with astonishment. He could not understand the state of abandonment in which he found a habitation that he had always heard described as being one of the most magnificent in all England. The delicately-sculptured wainscoting, the costly paintings, the rich gilding of the rafters and ceilings, were renowned among artists and considered as models which they labored to imitate. “How singular all this is!” he said to himself. “How can Lord Percy, whom I have known at court, so brilliant and accomplished, content himself in a place like this, magnificent without doubt, but abandoned, desolate, especially since the death of his father? And why has he not returned to court, where his tastes and habits naturally call him?” While absorbed in these reflections Sir Walsh, preceded by his aged conductor, entered a large octagonal saloon, gilded all over and pierced with crosslets on every side, through which poured floods of brilliantly-colored light, reflected from the stained glass with which they were ornamented. The view extended very far, and a large river, like a broad belt of silver, wound through the beautiful fields, interspersed with clumps of trees that increased still more the beauty of the landscape.