The mingled anguish and joy of hope awaked once more. For the silence was broken by a sound so faint that his listening ears could scarce detect its repetition, distracted as they were by the tumultuous pulses which throbbed at the possibility of escape. Yet why hope rather than fear? Why should the sound of approaching steps mean friends rather than foes? The fact grew certain. Steps were approaching, and were accompanied by a clash of arms that betokened soldiery. How he strained to catch every faint sound that might indicate the direction in which these, his fellow-men, alive and strong and capable of help, were moving! 'St. Nicholas befriend me! If the miracle is wrought that I be rescued from this living tomb, I vow to make pilgrimage to the Holy Sepulchre before my days are done!' Then he shuddered in sick misery lest the band should pass him by! Better a blow from the _miséricorde_ of an enemy, than the languishing torture of his present position. Others thought so too, for he heard more than one piteous cry for help. Then he, the proud earl, lifted up a feeble voice and craved deliverance, even by death!-- And it came. 'Here! here! This way, my lads, this way!' cried the familiar voice of the faithful jester. 'Look you, galliards, there is my famous cap and cape! Saints be praised! He wears them still. The Lord grant there is a living skull in the cap. I shrewdly thought I heard him squeak!' 'Ay, Grillonne, thou didst, sure enough!' cried the earl; and the revulsion of feeling from despair to hope was so great that he fainted again. When he revived, his head was in Grillonne's arms, and the intolerable weight of the slain who had fallen above him was removed from his limbs, which, however, were so numbed that he could not move them. Half-a-dozen stout fellows, archers, slingers, and spearmen, were bustling about him, dimly visible by the light of a horn lantern which one of them carried. Grillonne, seeing his eyes open, instantly held a flask to his lips, and when the draught had helped his revival, nodded sagely. ''Tis well to be taken for a fool sometimes, nuncle.' he remarked, twitching his tinkling cap from the earl's head. 'Thy fine helmet has been carried off in triumph to the enemy's camp on the corse of poor Sir Guy de Landerneau, whom I bedecked with it; seeing that, as they had already killed him as dead as a Norwich red herring, they could do him no further hurt. 'Twill have given us time even if they discover the cheat, as most like they will, for so many of them are full well acquainted with thy noble hawk nose.'