The knight expressed some scepticism on this point.
The lady replied, that they had given her so minute a detail of her
lord's proceedings, and so accurate a description of his person,
that she could not be deceived in them. This staggered the knight's
confidence in his own penetration; and if it had not been a heresy
in knighthood to suppose for a moment that there could be in rerum
natura such another pair of eyes as those of his mistress,
he would have acquiesced implicitly in the lady's judgment.
But while the lady and the knight were conversing, the warder blew
his bugle-horn, and presently entered a confidential messenger
from Palestine, who gave her to understand that her lord was well;
but entered into a detail of his adventures most completely at
variance with the baron's narrative, to which not the correspondence
of a single incident gave the remotest colouring of similarity.
It now became manifest that the pilgrims were not true men;
and Sir Ralph Montfaucon sate down to supper with his head full
of cogitations, which we shall leave him to chew and digest with his
pheasant and canary.
Meanwhile our three pilgrims proceeded on their way.
The evening set in black and lowering, when Robin turned
aside from the main track, to seek an asylum for the night,
along a narrow way that led between rocky and woody hills.
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