CHAPTER XXXI.
THE CALL OF THE CURLEW For the last time, the Knight waited in the crypt.
The men-at-arms, having deposited their burden before the altar, leaned each against a pillar, stolid and unobservant, but ready to drop to their knees so soon as the chanting of Vespers should reach the crypt from the choir above.
The man upon the stretcher lay motionless, with bandaged head; yet there was an alert brightness in his eyes, and the turn of his head betokened one who listened.

A cloak of dark blue, bordered with silver, covered him, as a pall.
Hugh d'Argent stood in the shadow of a pillar facing the narrow archway in the wall from which the winding stairs led up to the clerestory.
From this position he could also command a view of the steps leading up into the crypt from the underground way, and of the ground to be traversed by the White Ladies as they passed from the steps to the staircase in the wall.
Here the Knight kept his final vigil.
A strange buoyancy possessed him.

He seemed to have left his despondence, like a heavy weight, at the bottom of the river.

From the moment when, his breath almost exhausted, he had seen and grasped the Bishop's stone, bringing it in triumph to the surface, Hugh had felt sure he would win.

Aye, even before Symon had flung the stone; when, in reply to the doubt cast by him on our Lady's smile, the Knight had said: "I keep my trust in prayer," a joyous confidence had then and there awakened within him.