with him. He was very thin, and his long black
hair drooped all about his face, as he leaned over
the battlements looking at me: he was quite pale,
and his cheeks were hollow, but his eyes large, and
soft, and sad. So I reached out my arms to him,
and suddenly I was walking with him in a lovely garden,
and we said nothing, for the music which I had heard
at first was sounding close to us now, and there were
many birds in the boughs of the trees: oh, such
birds! gold and ruby, and emerald, but they sung not
at all, but were quite silent, as though they too
were listening to the music. Now all this time
Amyot and I had been looking at each other, but just
then I turned my head away from him, and as soon as
I did so, the music ended with a long wail, and when
I turned again Amyot was gone; then I felt even more
sad and sick at heart than I had before when I was
by the river, and I leaned against a tree, and put
my hands before my eyes. When I looked again
the garden was gone, and I knew not where I was, and
presently all my dreams were gone. The chips
were flying bravely from the stone under my chisel
at last, and all my thoughts now were in my carving,
when I heard my name, “Walter,” called,
and when I looked down I saw one standing below me,
whom I had seen in my dreams just before—Amyot.
I had no hopes of seeing him for a long time, perhaps
I might never see him again, I thought, for he was
away (as I thought) fighting in the holy wars, and
it made me almost beside myself to see him standing
close by me in the flesh. I got down from my
scaffolding as soon as I could, and all thoughts else
were soon drowned in the joy of having him by me; Margaret,
too, how glad she must have been, for she had been
betrothed to him for some time before he went to the
wars, and he had been five years away; five years!
and how we had thought of him through those many weary
days! how often his face had come before me! his brave,
honest face, the most beautiful among all the faces
of men and women I have ever seen. Yes, I remember
how five years ago I held his hand as we came together
out of the cathedral of that great, far-off city,
whose name I forget now; and then I remember the stamping
of the horses’ feet; I remember how his hand
left mine at last, and then, some one looking back
at me earnestly as they all rode on together—looking
back, with his hand on the saddle behind him, while
the trumpets sang in long solemn peals as they all
rode on together, with the glimmer of arms and the
fluttering of banners, and the clinking of the rings
of the mail, that sounded like the falling of many
drops of water into the deep, still waters of some
pool that the rocks nearly meet over; and the gleam
and flash of the swords, and the glimmer of the lance-heads
and the flutter of the rippled banners that streamed
out from them, swept past me, and were gone, and they
seemed like a pageant in a dream, whose meaning we
know not; and those sounds too, the trumpets, and
the clink of the mail, and the thunder of the horse-hoofs,
they seemed dream-like too—and it was all
like a dream that he should leave me, for we had said
that we should always be together; but he went away,
and now he is come back again.