The knight and the friar arriving at Arlingford Castle,
and leaving their horses in the care of lady Matilda's groom,
with whom the friar was in great favour, were ushered
into a stately apartment, where they found the baron alone,
flourishing an enormous carving-knife over a brother baron--of beef--
with as much vehemence of action as if he were cutting down an enemy.
The baron was a gentleman of a fierce and choleric temperament:
he was lineally descended from the redoubtable Fierabras
of Normandy, who came over to England with the Conqueror,
and who, in the battle of Hastings, killed with his own
hand four-and-twenty Saxon cavaliers all on a row.
The very excess of the baron's internal rage on the preceding day
had smothered its external manifestation: he was so equally angry
with both parties, that he knew not on which to vent his wrath.
He was enraged with the earl for having brought himself into
such a dilemma without his privily; and he was no less enraged
with the king's men for their very unseasonable intrusion.
He could willingly have fallen upon both parties, but, he must
necessarily have begun with one; and he felt that on whichever
side he should strike the first blow, his retainers would
immediately join battle. He had therefore contented himself
with forcing away his daughter from the scene of action.
In the course of the evening he had received intelligence that
the earl's castle was in possession of a party of the king's men,
who had been detached by Sir Ralph Montfaucon to seize on it during
the earl's absence. The baron inferred from this that the earl's
case was desperate; and those who have had the opportunity
of seeing a rich friend fall suddenly into poverty, may easily
judge by their own feelings how quickly and completely the whole