He went into his mint, deserted now, and sat him down upon a bench in his little room. The sunshine cut its living way through the dust of the silent empty place. A whip lay upon the floor, where it had been thrown by an overseer of the theows who worked in the mint. There were flies upon it. He kicked the thing aside with disgust; it was a reminder of the stern terrible age in which he lived, and in which he felt so out of place. Depression began to flow over him in silent waves, until he remembered that he was to meet Lady Alice in the afternoon. That turned the current of his idle, discontented thoughts towards a more palpable thing. His secret wooing of the Norman lady who was so proud and stately was very dear to him, and the romance of it pleased him even more than the mere material joys he hoped some day to gain from it. Proud as she was, womanlike she at least deigned to listen to him, and his crafty brain schemed darkly to take opportunity as it came, and make her his own by treachery. He went out again among the busy workmen, and began to direct some smiths who were rivetting a suit of brass armour, engraved with a curious pattern of beetles and snakes in arabesque, which required delicate handling. The weapon smiths were grumbling because they were short of hands for the heavier parts of their labour. Five or six of the most reliable serfs could not be found anywhere. Some one had seen them going into the forest, and it was supposed that they were acting as beaters for Geoffroi. Every one grumbled at the Baron. It was thought that this was no time for amusements. A boar would keep, herons would last till the world's end, deer would get them young every year till the world stopped. Every hour Roger Bigot came slowly nearer, and the men of Hilgay wanted the comfort of a master mind to direct and reassure them at a time like this. The two squires fussed and raved, and stormed till the sweat stood in great drops upon them, but they could not get half the work out of the men that Geoffroi, or even Fulke, were able to. They had no personality and were ineffective, lacking that most potent and most powerful of human things. But every one did his best, nevertheless, and by "noon-meat" work had distinctly advanced, and already the castle began to wear something of an aspect of war. It is extraordinary how a building or a place can be transformed in our minds by a few outward touches, combined with an attitude of expectation. If one has waited for a wedding in an almost empty church, the coming ceremony has an actual power of destroying the somewhat funereal aspect of the place. A single vase of flowers upon the altar seems swollen to a whole tree of bloom, the footsteps of a melancholy old man unlocking the rusty door, or spreading the priest's robes for him, is magnified into the beating of many feet. A crowd is created, expectant of a bride.