For several days after the visit of the Lady Guendolen and her lover to the house of the verdurer of Kentmere, rumors, many of which had been afloat since the catastrophe on the sands, began to increase among the dalesmen, of strangers seen at intervals among the hills or in the scattered hamlets, seeming to observe every thing, but themselves carefully avoiding observation, asking many questions, but answering none, and leaving a general impression on the minds of all who saw them, that they were thus squandered, as it were, through the lake country, as spies, probably of some marauding band, but certainly with no good intent. These individuals bore no sort of resemblance, it was said, or affinity one to the other, nor seemed to have any league of community between them, yet there was an unanimous sentiment, wherever they came and went, which they ordinarily did in succession, that they were all acting on a common plan and with a common purpose, however dissimilar might be their garb, their occupation, or their immediate purpose. And widely dissimilar these were--for one of those suspected was in appearance a maimed beggar, displaying the scallop-shell of St. James of Compostella, in token that he had crossed the seas for his soul's good, and vowing that he had lost his left arm in a sanguinary conflict with the Saracens, who were besieging Jerusalem, in the valley of Jehoshaphat; a second was a dashing pedler, with gay wares for the village maidens, and costlier fabrics--lawns from Cyprus, and silks and embroideries of Ind, for the taste of nobler wearers; another seemed a mendicant friar, though of what order it was not by any means so evident, since, his tonsure excepted, his apparel gave token of very little else than raggedness and filth. Nearly a week had passed thus, when, at a late hour in the afternoon, word was conveyed to the castle of Sir Yvo, under Hawkshead, by the bailiff, in person, of the little town of Kendal, which lay about midway between Kentmere and the bay, that a small body of horse, completely armed, having at their head a gentleman apparently of rank, had entered the town about mid-day, demanded quarters for the night for man and horse, and sent out one or two unarmed riders, as if to survey the country. In any part of England traversed by great roads, this would have created no wonder or surmise; for hundreds of such parties were to be seen on the great thoroughfares every day, few persons at that period journeying without weapons of offense and arms defensive, and gentlemen of rank being invariably attended by bodies of armed retainers, which were indeed rendered indispensable by the prevalence of private feuds and personal hostilities which were never wholly at an end between the proud barons, whose conterminous lands were constant cause of unneighborly bickerings and strife.