In truth, he felt himself indignant and wounded at the unreasonable perduracy of the man, in refusing an inestimable boon, for what he chose to consider a cause so trivial; and this, too, though had he himself been in the donjon of the infidel, expecting momentary death by the faggot or the rack, and been offered liberty, life, empire, immortality, on condition of leaving the least-valued Christian woman to the harem of the Mussulman, he would have spurned the offer with his most arrogant defiance. This seemed to him much as it would seem to the butcher, if the bull, with the knife at his throat, were to speak up and refuse to live, unless his favorite heifer might be allowed to share his fortunes. It appeared to him wondrous, indeed, but wondrously annoying, and almost absurd. In no respect did it strike him as one of the noblest and most generous deeds of self-abandonment of which the human soul is capable; though, had the self-same offer been spurned, as the slave spurned it, and in the very words which he had found in the rude eloquence of indignation, by belted knight or crowned king, he had unhesitatingly styled it an action of the highest glory, and worthy of immortal record in herald's tale or minstrel's story. Such is the weight of circumstance upon the noblest minds of men. With his brow bent, and his arms folded on his breast, moodily, almost sorrowfully, did the good knight of Taillebois wend his way back toward the towers of Waltheofstow, making no effort to overtake his brother-in-arms and entertainer, whom he could clearly see stalking along before him, in no more placable mood than himself, but burying himself on his return in his own chamber, whence he made his appearance no more that evening; though he might hear Sir Philip storming through the castle, till the vaulted halls and passages resounded from barbican to battlement. Meantime, in the lowly cottage of the serf--for the lord, though angry and indignant, had not failed of his plighted word--the lykewake of the dead boy went on--for that was a Saxon no less than a Celtic custom, though celebrated by the former with a sort of stolid decorum, as different as night is from day from the loud and barbarous orgies of their wilder neighbors.