As he approached, in hopes to make his entrance this way, the postern opened, a man came out, and, jumping into the boat, made his way to the farther side of the moat, and then, with a long pole, pushed the skiff back towards the place where he had embarked.

As he came near, Quentin discerned that this person was the Bohemian, who, avoiding him, as was not difficult, held a different path towards Liege, and was presently out of his ken.
Here was a new subject for meditation.

Had this vagabond heathen been all this while with the Ladies of Croye, and for what purpose should they so far have graced him with their presence?
Tormented with this thought, Durward became doubly determined to seek an explanation with them, for the purpose at once of laying bare the treachery of Hayraddin, and announcing to them the perilous state in which their protector, the Bishop, was placed, by the mutinous state of his town of Liege.
As Quentin thus resolved, he entered the castle by the principal gate, and found that part of the family who assembled for dinner in the great hall, including the Bishop's attendant clergy, officers of the household, and strangers below the rank of the very first nobility, were already placed at their meal.

A seat at the upper end of the board had, however, been reserved beside the Bishop's domestic chaplain, who welcomed the stranger with the old college jest of Sero venientibus ossa [the bones for those who come late], while he took care so to load his plate with dainties, as to take away all appearance of that tendency to reality, which, in Quentin's country, is said to render a joke either no joke, or at best an unpalatable one ["A sooth boord (true joke) is no boord," says the Scot.

S.].
In vindicating himself from the suspicion of ill breeding, Quentin briefly described the tumult which had been occasioned in the city by his being discovered to belong to the Scottish Archer Guard of Louis, and endeavoured to give a ludicrous turn to the narrative by saying that he had been with difficulty extricated by a fat burgher of Liege and his pretty daughter.
But the company were too much interested in the story to taste the jest.
All operations of the table were suspended while Quentin told his tale, and when he had ceased, there was a solemn pause, which was only broken by the Majordomo's saying in a low and melancholy tone, "I would to God that we saw those hundred lances of Burgundy!" "Why should you think so deeply on it ?" said Quentin.