The sun, scarce a hand's breadth above the sky, was nevertheless shining with beams as bright and warm as in the summer, when Richard of Woodville mounted his horse in the court-yard of the inn at Charing, and, followed by his two yeomen and his page, rode out, after receiving the valedictory speeches of the host and hostess, who, with a little crowd, composed of drawers and maidens, and some of their other guests, watched his departure, and commented upon his strong yet graceful limbs, and his easy management of his charger, prognosticating that he would prove stout in battlefield, and fortunate in hall and bower. Near the fine chaste cross at Charing--which stood hard by the spot where the grand libel upon British taste, called Trafalgar Square, now stands--Woodville paused for a moment, and letting his eye run past its grey fretwork, gazed down in the direction of the palace and the Abbey, hesitating whether he should take the shorter road by the convent of St. James, or, once more passing through Westminster, ride under the windows of fair Mary Markham, for the chance of one parting glance. I need not tell the reader how the question was decided; but as he turned his horse's head towards the palace, he saw a female figure standing upon the lower step of the cross, with the hood, then usually worn by women when out, drawn far over the face. The beautiful form, however, the small foot and ankle appearing from beneath the short kirtle, and the wild peculiar grace of the attitude, taken together, showed him at once that it was poor Ella Brune; and he was riding forward to speak with her, when she herself advanced and laid her hand upon his horse's neck.

"I have been watching for you, noble sir," she said, "to bid you adieu before you part, and to give you thanks from a poor but true heart."

"Nay, you should not have waited here, Ella," he replied; "why did you not come to the inn?"

"I did, yesterday at vespers," answered the girl; "but you were abroad; and the people laughed, as if I had done a folly. Your men told me, however, you were going this morning at daybreak, and so I waited here; for I would fain ask you one boon."

"And what is that, Ella?" inquired Woodville; "if it be possible to grant, it shall not be refused; for I have so little to give, that I must be no niggard of what I have."

"You can grant it," replied the girl, with a bright smile; "and you will be a niggard indeed if you do not; for it is what can do you no harm, and may stead me much in case of need. It is but to tell me whither you go, and when, and how."

"That is easily said, my fair maiden," answered Woodville. "I go first to my own place at Meon; then to the Court of Burgundy, at the end of six days; and, as I would not cross through France, I go by sea from Dover to a town called Nieuport, on the coast of Flanders. But say, is there aught I can do for you before I send the man I told you of, to give you what little assistance I can?"

"Send him not, send him not," cried the girl; "I am now rich--almost too rich, thanks to your generous interference with our good King. He sent me a large sum, by the hands of the bad knight, who killed the poor old man."

"Ay!" said Richard of Woodville; "and did you see this Sir Simeon of Roydon, my poor Ella? Beware of him; for he is not one to understand you rightly, I fear."

"I am aware of him," answered the minstrel's girl; "and I abhor him. He is a dark fearful man--but no more of that; I shall never see him more, I trust, for his eyes chill my blood. He looked at me as I love not men should look--not as you do, kindly and pitifully; but I know not how--it can be felt, not told."

"I understand you, Ella," replied Richard of Woodville; "and his acts are like his looks. He has made more than one unhappy heart in many a cottage that once was blithe. I grieve the King sent him to you."

"Oh, 'twill do no harm," cried the girl. "I shall not long be here; and I know him well. Would that I were not a woman!"

"What! would you avenge the wrong he did on that sad evening?" asked Woodville, with a smile, to think how feeble that small hand would prove in strife.

"No, not for that," she replied; "for I would try to forgive; but if I were not what I am you would take me with you in your train, and then I should be safe and happy."

"I trust you may be so still, even as a woman, poor girl," answered Richard of Woodville; and, after a few more words of kindness and comfort, he bade her adieu. Ella Brune's bright eyes glistened; and, perhaps, she found it difficult to speak the parting words, for she said no more, but, catching her young protector's hand, she pressed her lips upon it, and drew back to let him pass.

It was impossible for Richard of Woodville not to feel touched and interested; but he was not one to mistake her. He knew--not indeed by the hard teaching of experience, but by the intuitive perception of a feeling heart--how the unfortunate cling to those who show them kindness, and could distinguish between the love of gratitude and that of passion. He had purposely spoken gently and tenderly to her; and, in proportion as he could do little to afford her substantial aid, had tried to make his words and manner consoling and strengthening; and he thought, "If any one had acted so to me, I should feel towards him as this poor girl now feels in my case. Heaven guard her, poor thing, for hers is a sad fate!"

In such meditations he rode on; but we will not at present follow him on his way, turning rather to poor Ella Brune, who stood by the cross gazing after him, till his horse taking a road to the right, about two hundred yards before it reached the palace gate, was soon hidden by the trees, just at the entrance of the town of Westminster.

With a deep sigh, she then bent her steps along the road leading by the bank of the river towards the gate of the Temple, which was still in a somewhat ruinous state from the attack made upon it in 1381. As she went she looked not at the houses and gardens on either side--she marked not the procession which came forth, with cross and banner, from the convent on the right, nor the gay train that issued out of the gates of a large embattled house on the left; but separating herself from the people, who turned to gaze or hastened to follow, she made her way on, seeking the little inn where she dwelt.

There were two other persons, however, who followed the same course--men with swords by their side, and bucklers on their shoulder, and a snake embroidered on the mourning habits that they wore. But Ella saw them not--she was too deeply occupied with her own dark thoughts. She seemed alone in the wide world--more alone than ever, since Richard of Woodville had left the capital; and to be so is both sad and perilous. How strange, how lamentable it is, that society, that great wonderful confused institution, springing from man's necessity for mutual aid and support, provides no prop, no stay for those who are left alone in the midst of it; none to counsel, none to help, none to defend against the worst of all evils--temptation to vice. Of the body it takes some care; we must not cut, we must not strike the flesh; we must not enthral it; we must not kill. But we may wound, injure, destroy the spirit if we can, even at our pleasure. For substantial things, we multiply regulations, safe-guards, penalties; for the mind, on which all the rest so much depends, we provide none. The philosophy of legislation has yet a great step to advance--a step, perhaps, that may never--perhaps that can never--be taken; though of one thing we may be sure--that, till the great Eutopian dream is realized, and either by education, or some other means, a safeguard is provided for the minds of men as well as their bodies and their property, all the iron laws that can be enacted, will prove insufficient for the protection of those more tangible things which we think most easily defended. To regulate and guard the mind, especially in youth, is to turn the river near its source, and to ensure that it shall flow on in peace and bounty to the end; but to leave it unguided, and yet by law to strive to restrain man's actions, is to put weak floodgates against a torrent that we have suffered to accumulate. But no more of this. Perhaps what has been already said is too much, and out of place.

Yet, to return. It is strange and sad that society does afford no stay, no support, to those who are left alone in the wide world; nay, more, that to be so left, seems in a great degree to sever the bond between us and society. "He must have some friends. Let him apply to them," we are apt to say, whenever one of these solitary ones comes before us, and whether it is advice, assistance, or defence, that is needed. "He must have some friends!"--It is a phrase in constant use; and, in our own hearts, we go on to say, "if he have not, he must have lost them by his own fault;" and yet how many events may deprive man, and much more frequently woman, of the only friends possessed!

Poor Ella Brune felt that she was indeed alone; that there was no one to whom she could apply for anything that the heart and spirit of the bereaved and desolate might need. She knew, that had she been a leper, or halt, or blind, or fevered, she could have found those who would have tended, cured, supported her; but there was no comfort, no aid, for her loneliness; and scorn, or coldness, or selfish passion, or greedy knavery, would have met her, had she asked any one, in the wide crowd through which she passed, "Which way shall I turn my footsteps? how shall I bend my course through life?"

She felt it deeply, bitterly, and, as I have said, walked on full of her own sad thoughts, while the numbers round her grew less and less. At length, in the sort of irregular street that, even then, began to stretch out from the edge of Farringdon, without the walls, into the country towards Charing, she was left with none near her but the two men of whom we have spoken, and an old woman, walking slowly on before. The men seemed to notice no one, and conversed with each other in an under tone, till, in the midst of the highway, a little beyond St. Clement's well, one or two small wooden houses appeared built in the middle of the high road, with the end of a narrow lane leading up to the Old Temple in Oldbourne, and the house of the Bishop of Lincoln. There, however, one of them advanced a step, and spoke a word to Ella Brune, over her shoulder.

"Whither away, pretty maiden?" he said. "Are you not going to see the batch of country nobles who have come up to do homage?"

"I am going home," answered Ella Brune, gravely; "and want no company;" and she hurried her pace to get rid of him. The next instant the other man was by her side, and taking her arm roughly, he said, "You must come with us first, our lord wishes to speak with you."

Ella Brune struggled to disengage herself, saying, "Let me go, sir; if your lord wishes to speak with me, it must be at some other time. I have people expecting me hard by. Let me go, I say."

"Ay, we know all about it," rejoined the man, still keeping his hold, and drawing her towards the mouth of the lane. "You live at the Falcon, pretty mistress; but you must go with us first."

The sounds behind her had caused the old woman to turn round the moment before, and, seeing Ella struggling to free herself from the man who held her, she turned to remonstrate, exclaiming, "What are you about, sirs? Let the young woman go!"

"Get you gone, old beldame!" cried the other man, thrusting her back. "What is it to you?" and at the same time he seized Ella by the other arm, and hurried her on, in spite of her resistance.

"Beldame, indeed!" exclaimed the old woman, gazing after them. "Marry, thou art not civil. If thou callest me so, I will call thee Davy.^[2] I will see whither they go, however;" and thus saying, at the utmost speed she could master, she followed the men who were dragging poor Ella Brune along, calling in vain for help--for the houses in that part of the suburb were few, and principally consisted either of the large gothic mansions of the nobility, shut in within their own gates and surrounded by gardens, or the inns of prelates, isolated in the same manner. Whither they were dragging her, the old woman could not divine: for she thought it unlikely that any of the persons who dwelt in that neighbourhood would sanction such a violent act. Ella herself, however, knew right well, for she had taken the same road the day before, on her brief visit to Sir Simeon of Roydon. Peril and wandering, and sad chances of various kinds, such as seldom are the lot of one so young, had taught her to remark every particular that passed before her eyes with a precision which fixed things in her memory that might have escaped the sight of others; and she had seen the snake embroidered on the breast and back of the knight's servants, and recognised the badge instantly on those who held her.

As she expected, the men stopped at the gates of the house, which were open, and dragged her into the court; but her cries and her resistance ceased the moment she had reached that place, for she knew that they were both in vain, and made up her mind from that moment to the course which she had to pursue.

"Ha, ha! pretty maiden," said the man who had first spoken to her. "You are now willing to go, are you? Our lord is not lightly to be refused a visit from any fair dame. Come, come, I can manage her now, Pilcher; you stay at the foot of the stairs. Will you come willingly, girl, or must we carry you?"

"I will come," answered Ella Brune; "not willingly, but because I must;" and, with the man still holding her by the arm, she mounted one of the flights of stairs which led straight from the court-yard to the rooms above. Following a long corridor, or gallery, lighted by a large window at the end, the man led her from the top of the stairs towards the back part of the house, and, opening a door on the right, bade her go in. After one hasty glance around, which showed her that it was vacant, she entered the small cabinet which was before her, and the door was immediately shut and locked. She now found herself in a dark and gloomy chamber, which probably had been originally intended either for secret conferences, or for a place of meditation and prayer, where the eye could not distract the mind by catching any of the objects without; for the only window which it possessed was so high up in the wall, that the sill was above the eyes of any person of ordinary height. There was but one door, too--that by which she had entered; and the whole of the walls of the room was covered with black oak, of which also the beams overhead were formed. A few chairs and a small table composed the only furniture which it contained; and Ella paused in the midst, leaning upon the table in deep thought. Her mind, indeed, was bent only on one point. What were the purposes of Sir Simeon of Roydon, she did not even ask herself; for she knew right well that they were evil. Nor did she consider what she should answer, or how she should act; for a strong and resolute mind judges and decides with a rapidity marvellous in the eyes of the slow and hesitating; and her determination was already formed. Her only inquiry was, what were the means of escape from the chamber in which she had been placed, what was its position in regard to the apartments which she had visited on the previous day, and which had appeared to be those usually occupied by Roydon himself.

After thinking for some moments, and retracing with the aid of memory every step she had taken in the house, both on that morning and the day before, she judged, and judged rightly, that the chamber in which she had seen the knight must join that in which she now stood, though she had reached it by another entrance. The sound of voices, which she soon after heard speaking in a different direction from the gallery, confirmed her in that belief; for, though she could not distinguish any of the words, she felt convinced that the tones were those of Sir Simeon of Roydon, and of the man who had brought her thither.

At length the speakers ceased, a door opened and shut, and then the key was turned in the lock of that which gave entrance to the room where she was confined. As she expected, the next moment Simeon of Roydon stood before her, bearing a sort of laughing triumph in his face, which only increased her abhorrence. He was advancing quickly, as if to take her hand, but she drew back, with her eyes fixed upon him, saying, "Come not too near, sir. I am somewhat dangerous at times, when I am offended."

"Why, what folly is this, my sweet Ella!" said the knight; "my people tell me that you have resisted like a young wolf."

"You may find me more of a wolf than you suppose," replied Ella Brune, coldly.

"Nay," answered Sir Simeon, "we have ways of taming wolves--but I seek nothing but your good and happiness, foolish girl. Is it not much better for you to live in comfort and luxury, with rich garments, and dainty food, and glowing wine, to lie soft, and have no task, but to sing and play and please yourself, than to wander about over the wide world, the sport of 'prentices, or the companion of ruffians?"

"There are ruffians in all stations." rejoined Ella Brune; "else had I not been here."

The cheek of the knight glowed with an angry spot; but then again he laughed the moment after, in a tone more of mockery than of merriment, saying, "We will tame thee, pretty wolf, we will tame thee. Thou showest thy white teeth; but thou wilt not bite."

"Be not sure of that," answered Ella Brune. "I know well how to defend myself, should need be, and have done so before now."

"Well, we will see," replied Sir Simeon; "it takes some time to break a horse or hound, or train a hawk; and you shall have space allowed you. All soft and kindly entertainment shall you have. With me shall you eat and drink, and talk and sing, if you will. You shall have courtship, like a lady of the land, to try whether gentle means will do. But mark me, pretty Ella, if they will not, we must try others. I am resolved that you shall be mine by force, if not by kindness."

"You dare not use it," answered Ella Brune.

"And why not?" demanded the knight, with a haughty smile; "I have done more daring things than vanquish a coy maiden."

"I know you have," said Ella Brune, in a grave and fearless tone; "but I will tell you why not. First, because, whatever be your care, it would come to the King's ears, and you would pay for it with your head. Next, because I carry about me wherewithal to defend myself;" and, putting her hand into her bosom, she drew forth a small short broad-bladed knife, in a silver case. "This is my only friend left me here," she continued; "and you may think, perchance, most gallant knight, and warrior upon women, that this, in so weak a hand as mine, is no very frightful weapon. But, let me tell you, that it was tempered in distant lands--ay, and anointed too; and you had better far give your heart to the bite of the most poisonous snake that crawls the valley of Egypt, than receive the lightest scratch from this. The hilt is always at hand--so, beware!"

"Oh, we have antidotes," replied the knight; "antidotes for everything but love, sweet maid--and I swear, by your own bright eyes, that you shall be mine--so 'tis vain to resist. You shall have three days of tenderness; and then I may take a different tone."

As he spoke, some one knocked for the second time--the first had been unheeded. The knight turned to the door, and opened it, demanding impatiently, "What is it?"

"The Lord Combe and Sir Harry Alsover are in the court, desiring to speak with you," replied the servant who appeared.

"Well, take them up to the other chamber," answered the knight; and, without saying more to his fair captive, he quitted the room, and once more locked the door.

The moment he was in the corridor, however, he stopped, saying, in a meditative tone, "Stay, Easton." He hesitated for an instant, asking himself whether it were worth his while to pursue this course any farther, for a low minstrel girl, against such unexpected resistance.

The hand of Heaven almost always, in its great mercy, casts obstacles in the way of the gratification of our baser passions, which give us time for thought and for repentance; so that, in almost every case, if we commit sin or crime, it is with the perverse determination of conquering both impediments and conviction. Conscience is seldom, if ever, left unaided by circumstances. But the wicked find, in those very circumstances which oppose their course, motives for pursuing it more fiercely.

"No!" said Sir Simeon of Roydon, to himself--"By--! she shall not conquer me!--Tell the King!--She shall never have the means; for I will either tame her, till she be but my bird, to sing what note I please, or I will silence her tongue effectually. To be conquered by a woman!--No, no! She is very lovely; and her very lion look is worth all the soft simpering smiles on earth. Hark ye, Easton: there is a druggist, down by the Vintry, with whom I have had some dealings in days of yore. This girl has a poisoned dagger about her, which must be got from her. 'Tis a marvel she used it not on you, as you brought her along, for she drew it forth on me but now. The man's name is Tyler; and he would sell his soul for gold. Tell him that I have need of some cunning drug to make men sleep--to sleep, I say--understand me, not to die: to sleep so sound, however, that a light touch, or a low tone, would not awaken them. It must have as little taste as may be, that we may put it in her drink, or in her food; and then, while she sleeps, we'll draw the lion's teeth. He will give you anything for a noble;" and, after these innocent directions, the knight betook himself to the chamber whither he had directed his friends to be brought, and was soon in full tide of laughter and merriment at all the idle stories of the Court.