‘I am glad thy foolish words were so harmless,’ returned Mr. Heywood, smiling.  ’In my ears they sounded so evil that I could ill accept their testimony.—­Verily the animal is marvellous ill-favoured, but, as thou sayest, he hath done well, and the first return we make him shall be to give him another name.  The less man or horse hath to do with Satan the better, for what is he but the arch-foe of the truth?’

While they spoke, they kept a keen watch on the enemy—­who could not get near to attack them, save with a few pistol-bullets, mostly wide-shot—­for both horses were down, and their riders helpless if not slain.

‘What shall we call him then, father?’ asked Richard.

‘He is amazing like a huge rat!’ said his father.  ’Let us henceforth call him Bishop.’

‘Wherefore Bishop and not Beelzebub, sir?’ inquired Richard.

Mr. Heywood laughed, but ere he could reply, a large troop of horsemen appeared at the top of the street.  Glancing then behind in some anxiety, they saw to their relief that the pikemen had now formed themselves into a hollow square at the foot of the bridge, prepared to receive cavalry.  They turned therefore, and, passing through them, rode to find their regiment.

From that day Bishop, notwithstanding his faults many and grievous, was regarded with respect by both father and son, Richard vowing never to mount another, let laugh who would, so long as the brute lived and he had not recovered Lady.

But they had to give him room for two on the march, and the place behind him was always left vacant, which they said gave no more space than he wanted, seeing he kicked out his leg to twice its walking length.  Before long, however, they had got so used to his ways that they almost ceased to regard them as faults, and he began to grow a favourite in the regiment.

CHAPTER XL.

Dorothy and Rowland.

Such was the force of law and custom in Raglan that as soon as any commotion ceased things settled at once.  It was so now.  The minds of the marquis and lord Charles being at rest both as regarded the gap in the defences of the castle and the character of its inmates, the very next day all was order again.  The fate of Amanda was allowed gradually to ooze out, but the greater portion both of domestics and garrison continued firm in the belief that she had been carried off by Satan.  Young Delaware, indeed, who had been revelling late—­I mean in the chapel with the organ—­and who was always the more inclined to believe a thing the stranger it was, asserted that he saw devil fly away with her—­a testimony which gained as much in one way as it lost in another by the fact that he could not see at all.