All that is left us is to go to him and entreat him to unsay his spells.' A confused murmur of objections arose.
'Then your worships will remain here while I go to the Yellow Tower, and come to you again ?' said the mock earl, making as if he would leave them.
But they crowded round him with earnest refusals to be abandoned; for in their very souls they felt the fact that they were upon enchanted ground--and in the dark.
'Then follow me,' he said, and conducted them into the open air of the inner court, almost opposite the archway in its buildings leading to the stone bridge, whose gothic structure bestrid the moat of the keep.
For Raglan Castle had this peculiarity, that its keep was surrounded by a moat of its own, separating it from the rest of the castle, so that, save by bridge, no one within any more than without the walls could reach it.

On to the bridge Tom led the way, followed by his dupes--now full in the view of the earl where he sat in his parlour window.

When they had reached the centre of it, however, and glancing up at the awful bulk of stone towering above them, its walls strangely dented and furrowed, so as to such as they, might well suggest frightful means to wicked ends, they stood stock-still, refusing to go a step further; while their chief speaker, Upstill, emboldened by anger, fear, and the meek behaviour of 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.