Through the remainder of that night he sat there thinking. Now listening to the tramp of the sentries at his door and overhead upon the ramparts, starting from time to time as he heard them challenge, and the word passed on, till it died away; now thinking bitterly of the ease with which they had been beaten, and of the men who must have fallen in their defence. Then, from utter exhaustion, his eyes would close, and consciousness leave him for a few minutes as he sank back. But he never thoroughly went to sleep, the act of sinking back making him start into wakefulness, bitter and angry with himself for these lapses, and in every case springing up to pace the room. "Poor mother! What she must have suffered through it all, and I scarcely gave her a thought. That wretch must have locked her in her room or she would certainly have been seeing to the wounded." The clock chimed and struck, and chimed and struck again, with Roy counting the long lingering hours as they went on, for he was longing for the day to appear, hopeless as the dawn would be. But he wanted to see the general, to beg that he might go to Lady Royland; and the time when he would meet him seemed as if it would never come. But at last the faint light began to dawn through the window, and, hot and feverish, he threw it open, to look out across the court and over the eastern ramparts at the coming signs of day, which grew brighter and clearer till the sentinels upon the terrace-like place, and the crenellations, stood out of a purply black plainly marked against the sky. There were at least twenty men marching to and fro where at the most he had had two; and he groaned in spirit for a time as he went over again the occurrences of the past night. But far on high the sky began to be dappled with orange and golden clouds, which increased in brightness till the whole east was one glory of light, bringing with it hope; while the soft cool breeze he drank in gave him fresh courage and the strength to act the part he had to play,--that of one too proud to be cast down, so that his men should speak of him ever after as his father's son. "Better than being in one of the dungeons," he thought, as he indulged in a good bathe, and dressed himself simply; after which he carefully hung up his armour, with the helmet above, and longed for his sword that it might occupy its old place. "Better be lying rusting in the moat than resting in such hands as his," he muttered.