The Red Tavern, which, upon each previous occasion when Sir Richard had approached it, had appeared so forbiddingly lonely, was now become a veritable hive of buzzing industry. It was early evening when the young knight arrived there; and, in the obscure twilight, he could just make out the shadowy outlines of many horses tethered to the trees upon both sides of the pass. Scores of blazing, smoking torches set upright into the ground shed a weird illumination over this scene of strange activity. Guards were stationed closely round about. "Richard Rohan, knight ... and squire," the young knight passed word to a pair of them who halted and challenged him. Plainly he could hear, then, his name passed swiftly forward from lip to lip. When he rode within the circle of yellow light and dismounted before the door above which swung the sign of the vulture, his coming was greeted by an uproarious cheering, in the midst of which he could distinguish loud cries of "_Long live King Richard IV!_" Lord Bishop Kennedy was even then awaiting the young knight's arrival, welcoming him after a courteous, formal and dignified fashion. The Lord Bishop laid command upon one of his lieutenants; after which, in almost the flutter of an eyelid, the noise of talking hushed, the lighted torches vanished, and, when the dwindling sound of hoofbeats had died away, the tavern resumed its wonted somber and solitary aspect. Zenas spread table in the cozy warmth of the chimney-side, where Bishop Kennedy and Sir Richard took sup and drink together. Since his first sight of the tavern the young knight had invested it within his mind with an atmosphere of dark lugubriousness; thus was his surprise all the more great when, upon Zenas clearing table, the dessert was borne in by a silvery-haired woman of a most refined and motherly air, whom Lord Kennedy introduced as grandam Sutherland. "It doth astonish me," said Lord Kennedy, when she had gone from the room, "how the good grandam hath preserved her sweetness of temper throughout all these years of turmoil and dangers. It was the saddest of haps to her when the young prince died--she was like the gentlest of mothers to him withal." "And the young maiden must e'en have been a sore burdensome care," Sir Richard suggested. "Why," quoth Lord Kennedy, "she, sire, is the most noble, amiable, and pretty-mannered of all young maidens I have ever known." It was the first scintilla of emotion Sir Richard had observed displayed by Bishop Kennedy. His championship certainly appeared genuine. The young knight gathered that the goodman was not particularly well acquainted with her volatile tempers. He bethought him also that it would ill become him to speak belittlingly of one who, by now, was doubtless become his dearest friend's wife. He made shift, therefore, to take up another subject, and one that for long had been a sore weight upon his mind.