Only two female attendants were found, and these were
suffered, by Earl Talbot's orders, to go free.
"This is evidently the ladies' bower, when they happen to be here,"
Lord Grey said; as, an hour later, he entered a room in one of the
turrets, which had been already plundered by the soldiers. "'Tis a pity
that we did not find one or two of Glendower's daughters here. They
would have been invaluable as hostages.
"We were too hasty, Talbot. We should have closely questioned some of
the men, or those two women, and should have found means to learn
whether they were staying here. It may be that it was so, and that they
are, even now, concealed in some secret hiding place, hard by."
He at once called up several of his men, and set them to search every
room in the turret, for some sign of an entrance to a secret chamber;
but although the walls were all tapped, and the floors examined, stone
by stone, no clue was found to such an entrance, if it existed.
The house, which was built entirely of stone, offered no facilities for
destroying it by fire. The doors were all hewn down; the gates in the
wall taken off their hinges, and thrown into the moat, being too
massive to be destroyed by the arms of the soldiers.
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