hostilities and seek refreshment and rest.  A trumpet was to sound at the hour of ten, half an hour before the truce concluded, to summon them again to their posts.  The men most acute in penetration, most firm and steady in purpose, Nigel selected as sentries along the walls; the post of each being one of the round towers we have mentioned, the remaining spaces were consequently clear.  Night had already fallen, and anxiously observing the movements on the walls; endeavoring to discover whether the various little groups of men and women in the ballium meant any thing more than usual, Sir Nigel did not notice various piles or stacks of straw and wood which were raised against the wall in many parts where the shadows lay darkest, and some also against the other granaries which were contained in low, wooden buildings projecting from the wall.  Neither he nor his friends, nor even the men-at-arms, noticed them, or if they did, imagined them in the darkness to be but the stones and other weights generally collected there, and used to supply the engines on the wails.

With the exception of the sentries and the men employed by Nigel, all the garrison had assembled in the hall of the keep for their evening meal, the recollection of whose frugality they determined to banish by the jest and song; there were in consequence none about the courts, and therefore that dark forms were continually hovering about beneath the deep shadows of the walls, increasing the size of the stacks, remained wholly undiscovered.

Agnes had entered the church by a covered passage, which united the keep to its inner wall, and thence by a gallery through the wall itself, dimly lighted by loopholes, to the edifice, whose southern side was formed by this same wall.  It was therefore, though in reality situated within the ballium or outer court, nearer by many hundred yards to the dwelling of the baron than to the castle walls, its granaries, towers, etc.  This outward ballium indeed was a very large space, giving the appearance of a closely-built village or town, from the number of low wooden and thatched-roofed dwellings, which on either side of the large open space before the great gate were congregated together.  This account may, we fear at such a moment, seem somewhat out of place, but events in the sequel compel us to be thus particular.  A space about half a mile square surrounded the church, and this position, when visited, by Sir Nigel at nine o’clock, was quiet and deserted; indeed there was very much less confusion and other evidences of disquiet within the dwellings than was now usual, and this circumstance perhaps heightened the calm which, as we have said, had settled on Sir Nigel’s mind.