To-night I came forth through the storm, though an old man, to deliver you from the manifest snares of the devil--" But the Earl interrupted his recital without compunction.
"Set Malise MacKim in the inner dungeon," he cried.

"Thrust his feet into the great stocks, and let my lord Abbot be warded safely in the castle chapel.

He is little likely to be disturbed there at his devotions." "Aye, my lord, it shall be done!" said Landless Jock, shaking his head, however, with gloomy foreboding, as the haughty young Earl in his wet and torn disarray flashed past him without further notice of the two men whom the might of his bare word had committed to prison.
The Earl sprang up the narrow turret stairs, passing as he did so through the vaulted hall of the men-at-arms, where more than a hundred stout archers and spearmen sat carousing and singing, even at that advanced hour of the night, while as many more lay about the corridors or on the wooden shelves which they used for sleeping upon, and which folded back against the wall during the day.

At the first glimpse of their young master, every man left awake among them struggled to his feet, and stood stiffly propped, drunk or sober according to his condition, with his eyes turned towards the door which gave upon the turnpike stair.

But with a slight wave of his hand the Earl passed on to his own apartment.
Here he found his faithful body-servant, Rene le Blesois, stretched across the threshold.