Shortly after he saw, to his great surprise, coming from the front
of the Castle walls a lady on horseback, with a single attendant.
She rode straight forward into the field, and up the slope to where
his army and tents were spread. It was not till she got quite near
that he discerned her to be his sister Anna; and much was he alarmed
that she should have run such risk as to sally out in the face of
his forces without knowledge of their proceedings, when at any
moment their first discharge might have burst forth, to her own
destruction in such exposure. She dismounted before she was quite
close to him, and he saw that her familiar face, though pale, was
not at all tearful, as it would have been in their younger days.
Indeed, if the particulars as handed down are to be believed, he was
in a more tearful state than she, in his anxiety about her. He
called her into his tent, out of the gaze of those around; for
though many of the soldiers were honest and serious-minded men, he
could not bear that she who had been his dear companion in childhood
should be exposed to curious observation in this her great grief.
When they were alone in the tent he clasped her in his arms, for he
had not seen her since those happier days when, at the commencement
of the war, her husband and himself had been of the same mind about
the arbitrary conduct of the King, and had little dreamt that they
would not go to extremes together.
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