“Etienne hath found foes,” he said in a voice which he strove to render calm.

“A light snow had begun to fall,” continued the speaker, “the sun was already very low, and it was dusk in the woods, when our dogs began to growl.  Dimly in the shade we saw three or four beings creeping forward, as if studying the ground carefully.  We watched them with fear, doubting if they were of this world.”

“Why?”

“They had horns, and tails, and huge ears.”

“They say the wood is haunted by wood demons.”

“Then thou wert afraid to follow?”

“We dare fight men, we fear none who breathe; but we shrink from Satan and his hosts.  Still we sent a flight of arrows, and they vanished.”

“Was the distance near enough to do execution?”

“Scarcely, had they been men; it mattered not if they were what they appeared to be.”

Strange to say, the idea that the foe had been masquerading for the purpose of frightening them, never struck our Normans.

“When they had gone, we approached the spot,” continued the aged knight of Senville, “and found foot marks in the snow, which, from the previous fall, lay lightly on the ground, for the storm of tonight had hardly set in.  There were marks of one of our parties, and we saw by torchlight strange footprints, as if they had been tracked by two or three daring foes—­we thought we distinguished hoof marks.”

A terrible silence fell upon the whole assembly, as the idea that they had been contending with demons, and not with mortals, fell upon them, and perhaps the bravest would have hesitated to enter the forest that night, however dire the need.

The baron knew this; yet when supper was over, when the hour of retiring to rest had arrived, and still there were no signs of his son, he selected a band of trusty warriors, who, in spite of the story of the demons, which Eustace’s men had made known throughout the castle, would not be untrue to their lord.

And with these men, while all the rest slept, he penetrated the forest, and with torches and horns made night hideous, until cold and fatigue drove him home, his heart heavier than before, his desire unaccomplished.

He threw himself upon his couch, only to be haunted by dreadful dreams, in which he saw his son surrounded by the demons of Sir Eustace’s tale, and in every other variety of danger or distress, like the constantly shifting scenes of a modern theatre.

And in all these dreams the “Dismal Swamp” played a prominent part.

Day broke at last, cold but bright; the first beams of the sun gladdened the castle, reflected keenly from the white ground, the trees hung with frozen snow, which had broken many branches to the ground—­the winter seemed to have come in good earnest.

Early in the day, a hundred men, well armed and mounted, led by the baron, again entered the forest.  They reached, in due course, the part of the wood assigned to Etienne on the previous day.