It was a bright and beautiful morning, and preoccupied as he was, the
plotting cardinal could not be wholly insensible to the loveliness of the
scene around him. Crossing Spring Hill, he paused at the head of a long
glade, skirted on the right by noble beech-trees whose silver stems
sparkled in the sun shine, and extending down to the thicket now
called Cooke's Hill Wood. From this point, as from every other
eminence on the northern side of the forest, a magnificent view of the
castle was obtained.
The sight of the kingly pile, towering above its vassal woods, kindled
high and ambitious thoughts in his breast.
"The lord of that proud structure has been for years swayed by me," he
mused, "and shall the royal puppet be at last wrested from me by a
woman's hand? Not if I can hold my own."
Roused by the reflection, he quickened his pace, and shaping his
course towards Black Nest, reached in a short time the borders of a
wide swamp lying between the great lake and another pool of water of
less extent situated in the heart of the forest. This wild and dreary
marsh, the haunt of the bittern and the plover, contrasted forcibly and
disagreeably with the rich sylvan district he had just quitted.
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