The young knight was not aware of how long he remained standing beside the window, with his face pressed close against its ruby pane. Though he did not realize it, the scene then being enacted upon the mosaic floor far beneath him was one well worth pausing to witness. It was the assembling of the nucleus of a wonderful movement, the deep, still center of a wide whirlpool of elaborate conspiracy and action. From those clear brains were emanating invisible wires and arms of steel, which, clutching the individual, thrust him mercilessly and inevitably ahead in the vanguard of the movement. They were not human down there. Each of them was but a cold, bloodless, and calculating automaton. Lives, to them, were like pinches of sand upon blood-slippery lists, serving but to give purchase to the wheels of their tireless juggernaut. The young knight watched while Douglas seemed to introduce the inn-keeper to the assembled counselors. Tyrrell's voice must have been uncommonly resonant, for its deep tones came faintly to the ears of the observer at the window. It recalled to him the night of the burial of the hound and the war song. The grace of the speaker's sweeping gestures, as he continued his oration to the men around the table, elicited a genuine admiration from Sir Richard. He kept close to the window till Tyrrell had finished and gone from the hall. Though the young knight was unable to link himself or his future with the council below, he was sensible of a vague presentiment of a something portentous to his welfare that seemed to communicate itself to him through the walls of the chamber. With an inward sense of creeping fear he started toward the end of the passageway. He noted the trembling of his hand as he laid hold of the iron rung of the ladder leading down to de Claverlok's dungeon. He was afraid of the things that he could not understand. It was therefore with a deep sense of foreboding evil that he lowered himself to the bottom of the deep well and opened the door of the grizzled knight's dungeon. Upon that afternoon Sir Richard had apprised his friend of his coming, and, saving that he was not wearing his armor, de Claverlok was all prepared and waiting for him. "Put on your suit of mail," said the young knight hurriedly. "I'll help you to buckle it fast." "Eh? But I'm not a giant, Sir Dick, that can wade through the moat with my nose above the water. Nor, by the rood, can I swim it with a load of iron upon my back!" "'Tis solid frozen," Sir Richard said. "We'll walk boldly over." "And the moon, ... eh?" "There's no faint hint of it, de Claverlok. Make haste! Things have I seen that have set me all of a-tremble. It may befall that our ways must perforce diverge; an it do, I'll meet you so soon as may be within the deserted shepherd's hut; ... remember, my friend."