The windows were smashed; the door stove in; the lodge, a neat little Swiss cottage, with a garden where the pinafores of Mrs.Gurth's children might have been seen hanging on the gooseberry-bushes in more peaceful times, was now a ghastly heap of smoking ruins: cottage, bushes, pinafores, children lay mangled together, destroyed by the licentious soldiery of an infuriate monarch! Far be it from me to excuse the disobedience of Athelstane and Rowena to their sovereign; but surely, surely this cruelty might have been spared.
Gurth, who was lodge-keeper, was lying dreadfully wounded and expiring at the flaming and violated threshold of his lately picturesque home.

A catapult and a couple of mangonels had done his business.

The faithful fellow, recognizing his master, who had put up his visor and forgotten his wig and spectacles in the agitation of the moment, exclaimed, "Sir Wilfrid! my dear master--praised be St.Waltheof--there may be yet time--my beloved mistr--master Athelst.

.

." He sank back, and never spoke again.
Ivanhoe spurred on his horse Bavieca madly up the chestnut avenue.