But while the lady and the knight were conversing, the warder blew his bugle-horn, and presently entered a confidential messenger from Palestine, who gave her to understand that her lord was well; but entered into a detail of his adventures most completely at variance with the baron's narrative, to which not the correspondence of a single incident gave the remotest colouring of similarity.

It now became manifest that the pilgrims were not true men; and Sir Ralph Montfaucon sate down to supper with his head full of cogitations, which we shall leave him to chew and digest with his pheasant and canary.
Meanwhile our three pilgrims proceeded on their way.

The evening set in black and lowering, when Robin turned aside from the main track, to seek an asylum for the night, along a narrow way that led between rocky and woody hills.

A peasant observed the pilgrims as they entered that narrow pass, and called after them: "Whither go you, my masters?
there are rogues in that direction." "Can you show us a direction," said Robin, "in which there are none?
If so we will take it in preference." The peasant grinned, and walked away whistling.
The pass widened as they advanced, and the woods grew thicker and darker around them.

Their path wound along the slope of a woody declivity, which rose high above them in a thick rampart of foliage, and descended almost precipitously to the bed of a small river, which they heard dashing in its rocky channel, and saw its white foam gleaming at intervals in the last faint glimmerings of twilight.