"Willingly, willingly. I would have it to tell Guendolen at her wakening. 'T will be a cure to her also. She is a tender-hearted child ever, and was so from her cradle. Why, I have known her cry like the lady Niobe, that the prior of St. Albans told us of--who wept till she was changed into a chipping fountain, when blessed St. Michael and St. George slew all her tribe of children, for that she likened herself, in her vain pride of beauty, to the most holy virgin mother, St. Mary of Sienna--at the killing of a deer by a stray shaft, that had a suckling fawn beside her foot; and when I caused them to imprison Wufgitha, that was her nurse's daughter, for selling of a hundred pounds of flax that was given her to spin, she took sick, and kept to her bed two days and more, all for that she fancied the wench would pine; though her prison-house was the airiest and most lightsome turret chamber in my house at Kendal, and she was not in gyves nor on prison diet. Faith! I had no peace with her, till I gave the whole guidance of the women into her hands. They are all ladies since that day at Kendal, or next akin to it." "Over god's forbode!" answered Philip, laughing. "It must have been a black day for your seneschal. How rules he your warders, since? My fellow, Hundibert, swears that the girls need more watching than the laziest swine in the whole Saxon herd. But come; let us be moving." With that they descended the winding stone stairway into the great hall or guard-room, which occupied the whole of one floor of the castle--a noble vaulted room, stone-arched and stone-paved, its walls hung with splendid arms and well-used weapons, "Old swords, and pikes, and bows, And good old shields, and targets, that had borne some stout old blows." Thence, through an echoing archway, above which in its grooves of stone hung the steel-clinched portcullis, and down a steep and almost precipitous flight of steps, without any rail or breastwork, they reached the large court-yard, where some of the retainers were engaged in trying feats of strength and skill, throwing the hammer, wrestling, or shooting with arbalasts at a mark, while others were playing at games of chance in a cool shadowy angle of the walls, moistening their occupation with an occasional pull at a deep, black tankard, which stood beside them on the board.