On the other side, next to Louise de Roche d’or, rode a tall and handsome youth, wearing the belt and spurs of knighthood, and gazing at times into the face of the beautiful girl with eyes full of deep, ardent affection, and speaking to her in those low, earnest tones which denote so certainly the existence of strong and pervading interest and affection. The knight, already famous far beyond his years, for deeds of dauntless daring, was Sir Louis de Montfauçon, a puissant baron of Auvergne, whose bands marched with those of Castel de Roche d’or, and the affianced husband of the young and fair Louise. Pages and equerries, with the usual attendants, followed, and the courtyard rang and re-echoed with the clang of hoofs, the neighing of coursers, the deep baying of the bloodhounds, and the screams of the frightened falcons. They issued from the castle-gates; wound through the open park, and the dense woodland chase beyond it; swept down a steep descent into a broad and fertile valley, watered by a great, clear river, which they crossed by a wooden bridge: traversed the narrow, sandy street of the village of Castel de Roche d’or, and, turning off short to the right, entered a little dell, through which a bright, clear rivulet murmured over its pebbly bed, on its way to join the larger river in the valley. The lower part of this little dell was principally open pasturage, dotted here and there with brakes and solitary bushes of hawthorn; and along the margin of the rivulet there ran a fringe of willow and alder thickets, but a little higher up it degenerated into a mere gorge or ravine, thickly overshadowed by the gnarled arms and dense, verduous umbrage of huge, immemorial oaks, the outskirts and advanced guard, as it were, of a vast oak-forest, which covered leagues on leagues of rough and broken country, to which this dell formed the readiest means of access. Just in the jaws of this pass, overhung by the oaks, stood a small, gray, rustic chapel, supported on four clustered columns, with groined arches intersecting each other resting upon them, a small, arched canopy containing a bell on the summit of its steep, slated roof, and a low-browed door, with a round arch, decorated with the wolf-toothed carvings of the earliest Norman style. Immediately in front of the door, the little rivulet which watered the dell burst out of the other in a strong, gushing spring, which had been blessed by some saint of old, and, being surmounted by a vaulted canopy, was held to be peculiarly holy by the superstitious rustics of the region. This lovely spot, however, peaceful as it showed, and calm in its tranquil and sequestered security, had been the scene, some two or three years before, of a fearful and cruel crime: had witnessed the violent seizure of a sweet, innocent, and rarely lovely bride, fresh from the marriage benediction, by this very Raoul de Canillac; and the girl had escaped pollution only by self-immolation.