The twelfth hour of the night had already been announced from half the steeples of England’s metropolis, and the echoes of its last stroke lingered in mournful cadences among the vaulted aisles of Westminster. It was not then, as now, the season of festivity, the high-tides of the banquet and the ball, that witching time of night. No din of carriages or glare of torches disturbed the sober silence of the streets, illuminated only by the waning light of an uncertain moon; no music streamed upon the night-wind from the latticed casements of the great, who were contented, in the days of their lion-queen, to portion out their hours for toil or merriment, for action or repose, according to the ministration of those great lights which rule the heavens with an indifferent and impartial sway, and register their brief career of moments to the peer as to the peasant by one unvarying standard. A solitary lamp burned dim and cheerlessly before a low-browed portal in St. Stephen’s; and a solitary warder, in the rich garb still preserved by the yeomen of the guard, walked to and fro with almost noiseless steps--his corslet and the broad head of his shouldered partisan flashing momentarily out from the shadow of the arch, as he passed and repassed beneath the light which indicated the royal residence--distinguished by no prouder decorations--of her before whose wrath the mightiest of Europe’s sovereigns shuddered. A pile of the clumsy fire-arms then in use, stacked beneath the eye of the sentinel, and the dark outlines of several bulky figures outstretched in slumber upon the pavement, seemed to prove that some occurrences of late had called for more than common vigilance in the guarding of the place. The prolonged cry of the watcher, telling at each successive hour that all was well, had scarcely passed his lips, before the distant tramp of a horse, and the challenge of a sentry from the bridge, came heavily up the wind. For a moment the yeoman listened with all his senses; then, as it became evident that the rider was approaching, he stirred the nearest sleeper with the butt of his heavy halbert. “Up, Gilbert! up, man, and to your tools, ere they be wanted. What though the earl’s proud head lie low?--he hath friends and fautors enough in the city, I trow, to raise a coil whene’er it lists them!” The slumbers of the yeomen were exchanged on the instant for the guarded bustle of preparations; and, before the horseman, whose approach had caused so much excitement, drew bridle at the palace-gate, a dozen bright sparks glimmering under the dark portal, like glow-worms beneath some bushy coppice, announced the readiness of as many levelled matchlocks. “Stand, ho! the word--” “A post to her grace of England!” was the irregular reply, as the rider, hastily throwing himself from off his jaded hackney, advanced toward the yeoman. “Stand there, I say!--no nearer, on your life! Shoot, Gilbert, shoot, an’ he stir but a hand-breadth!”