CHAPTER III—ENLIGHTENMENT.

When William Armstrong awoke, he thought he had overslept himself, for the trampling of horses sounded in the paved courtyard below. The one window of his room, over which he had drawn and fastened heavy wooden shutters the night before, let in a thread of light which showed him a new day had come, and the activity in the yard made him fear he had lain longer abed than was his custom. He was the more convinced of this in that he remembered hazily the clattering hoofs of a horse some time before, and then later, ano…