the supposed earl, broke out in a torrent of arrogance, wherein his intention was to brandish the terrors of the High Parliament over the heads of his lordship of Worcester and all recusants.  He had not got far, however, before a shrill whistle pierced the air, and the next instant arose a chaos of horrible, appalling, and harrowing noises, ‘such a roaring,’ in the words of their own report of the matter to the reverend master Flowerdew, ’as if the mouth of hell had been wide open, and all the devils conjured up’—­doubtless they meant by the arts of the wizard whose dwelling was that same tower of fearful fame before which they now stood.  The skin-contracting chill of terror uplifted their hair.  The mystery that enveloped the origin of the sounds gave them an unearthliness which froze the very fountains of their life, and rendered them incapable even of motion.  They stared at each other with a ghastly observance, which descried no comfort, only like images of horror.  ’Man’s hand is not able to taste’ how long they might have thus stood, nor ’his tongue to conceive’ what the consequences might have been, had not a more healthy terror presently supervened.  Across the tumult of sounds, like a fiercer flash through the flames of a furnace, shot a hideous, long-drawn yell, and the same instant came a man running at full speed through the archway from the court, casting terror-stricken glances behind him, and shouting with a voice half-choked to a shriek—­

‘Look to yourselves, my masters; the lions are got loose!’

All the world knew that ever since King James had set the fashion by taking so much pleasure in the lions at the Tower, strange beasts had been kept in the castle of Raglan.

The new terror broke the spell of the old, and the parliamentary commissioners fled.  But which was the way from the castle?  Which the path to the lions’ den?  In an agony of horrible dread, they rushed hither and thither about the court, where now the white horse, as steady as marble, should be when first they crossed it, was, to their excited vision, prancing wildly about the great basin from whose charmed circle he could not break, foaming, at the mouth, and casting huge water-jets from his nostrils into the perturbed air; while from the surface of the moat a great column of water shot up nearly as high as the citadel, whose return into the moat was like a tempest, and with all the elemental tumult was mingled the howling of wild beasts.  The doors of the hall and the gates to the bowling green being shut, the poor wretches could not find their way out of the court, but ran from door to door like madmen, only to find all closed against them.  From every window around the court—­from the apartments of the waiting gentlewomen, from the picture-gallery, from the officers’ rooms, eager and merry eyes looked down on the spot, themselves unseen and unsuspected, for all voices were hushed, and for anything the bumpkins heard or saw they might have been in a place deserted