1 From this room, ere yet the door was opened, proceeded a low and melancholy strain of vocal music.
2 "I like not that music, father Cedric," said Athelstane; for by this title of respect he was accustomed to address him.
3 No sooner was Rowena seated, than a burst of music, half-drowned by the shouts of the multitude, greeted her new dignity.
4 As the procession entered the lists, the sound of a wild Barbaric music was heard from behind the tents of the challengers, where the performers were concealed.
5 From the village were heard the distant sounds of revelry, mixed occasionally with loud laughter, sometimes broken by screams, and sometimes by wild strains of distant music.
6 He reclined back upon his seat, with his eyes half shut; now, folding his hands and twisting his thumbs, he seemed absorbed in attention, and anon, balancing his expanded palms, he gently flourished them in time to the music.
7 At length, as the Saracenic music of the challengers concluded one of those long and high flourishes with which they had broken the silence of the lists, it was answered by a solitary trumpet, which breathed a note of defiance from the northern extremity.