"Oh! yes, you will, Edith," he answered, quietly. "Oh! yes, you will, for half a dozen reasons; though one is enough, for that matter. First, you will not see my mother dead through your obstinacy. Second, you will not stay to be outraged yourself, before my very eyes, without my having power to aid you----" "Kenric!" "It is mere truth, Edith. Thirdly, it is your duty to go; and last, it is my will that you go, and I never knew you refuse that." "Nor ever will, Kenric; though it break my heart to do it." "Tush! tush! girl; hearts are tough things, and do not break so easily; and when you kiss me to-morrow at the castle, you'll think of this no more. See, here's the boy with the pony and the pillion. Now, hurry, and coax my mother out, and get on your cloak and wimple, that's a good lass. I would not have you here when Foulke d'Oilly's riders come, no! not to be the Lord of Kentmere. Hurry! hurry!" Many minutes had not passed, before, after a long embrace, and a flood of tears on the part of Edith, the two women mounted on the sturdy pony, the wife in the saddle, and the aged mother seated on a sort of high-backed pillion--made like the seat of an arm-chair--and secured by a broad belt to the waist of her daughter, took their way across the wooded hills toward Ambleside, the boy Ralph leading the animal by the head, and two brace of noble alans, his master's property, which Kenric did not choose to expose to the cupidity of his expected captors, gamboling in front, or following gravely at heel, according to their various qualities of age and temper. The son and husband gazed after them wistfully, so long as they remained in sight; and when, as they crossed the last ridge of the low intermediate hills which divide the narrow glen of the upper Kent from the broader dale of Windermere, standing out in bold relief against the strong light of the western sky, Edith waved her kerchief, he drew his hard hand across his brow, turned into his desolate dwelling, and, sitting down by the hearth, was soon lost in gloomy meditation. Darkness soon fell over lake and meadow, mountain and upland. Hundreds of stars were twinkling in the clear sky, to which a touch of frost, not unusual at this early season among those hill regions, had lent an uncommon brilliance, but the moon had not yet risen. Kenric was now becoming restless and impatient, and, as is frequently the case when we are awaiting even the most painful things, which we know to be inevitable, he soon found himself wishing that the time would come, that he might know the worst, and feeling that the suspense was worse than almost any reality.