Lady Seaton had spoken as she believed.  No communication had been permitted between the prisoners on their way to England; indeed, from Sir Christopher’s wounded and exhausted state, he had travelled more leisurely in a litter, always in the rear of the earl’s detachment, and occupied by her close attendance upon him, his wife had scarcely been aware of the young page ever in attendance on her brother, or deemed him, if she did observe him, a retainer of Hereford’s own.  There was so much of fearful peril and misery hovering over her in her husband’s fate, that it was not much wonder her thoughts lingered there more than on Agnes, and that she was contented to believe as she had spoken, that she at least was safe.

Night fell on the town of Berwick.  Silence and darkness had come on her brooding wings; the varied excitement of the day was now but a matter of wondering commune round the many blazing hearths, where the busy crowds of the morning had now gathered.  Night came, with her closing pall, her softened memories, her sleeping visions, and sad waking dreams.  She had come, alike to the mourned and mourner, the conqueror and his captive, the happy and the wretched.  She had found the Earl of Berwick pacing up and down his stately chamber, his curtained couch unsought, devising schemes to lower the haughty pride of the gallant warrior whom he yet feared.  She had looked softly within the room where that warrior lay, and found him, too, sleepless, but not from the same dark dreams.  He grieved for his sovereign, for the fate of one noble spirit shrined in a woman’s form, and restless and fevered, turned again and again within his mind how he might save from a yet darker doom the gallant youth his arms had conquered.  And not alone on them did night look down.  She sent her sweet, reviving influence, on the rays of a bright liquid star, through the narrow casement which gave light to the rude unfurnished chamber where Sir Nigel Bruce and his attendant lay.  They had not torn that poor faithful child from his side.  Hereford’s last commands had been that they should not part them, and there they now lay; and sleep, balmy sleep had for them descended on the wings of night, hovering over that humble pallet of straw, when from the curtained couch of power, the downy bed of luxury, she fled.  There they lay; but it was the boy who lay on the pallet of straw, his head pillowed by the arm of the knight, who sat on a wooden settle at his side.  He had watched for a brief space those troubled slumbers, but as they grew calmer and calmer, he had pressed one light kiss on the soft yielding cheek, and then leant his head on his breast, and he too slept—­even in sleep tending one beloved.