summer noon
RICHARD III . More than three months had elapsed since the event narrated in the last chapter , and it had been the precursor of others of still greater importance , which will evolve themselves in the course of our narrative . But , profess to present to the reader not a precise detail of circumstances , according to their order and date , but a series of pictures , endeavouring to exhibit the most striking incidents before the eye or imagination of those whom it may concern , we therefore open a new scene , and bring other actors upon the stage . Along a wasted tract of country , more than twelve miles distant from the Garde Doloureuse , in the heat of a summer noon , which shed a burning lustre on the silent valley , and the blackened ruins of the cottages with which it had been once graced , two travellers walked slowly , whose palmer cloaks , pilgrims ' staves , large slouched hats , with a scallop shell bound on the front of each , above all , the cross , cut in red cloth upon their shoulders , marked them as pilgrims who had accomplished their vow , and had returned from that fatal bourne , from which , in those days , returned so few of the thousands who visited it , whether in the love of enterprise , or in the ardour of devotion . The pilgrims had passed , that morning , through a scene of devastation similar to , and scarce surpassed in misery by , those which they had often trod during the wars of the Cross . They had seen hamlets which appeared to have suffered all the fury of military execution , the houses being burned to the ground ; and in many cases the carcasses of the miserable inhabitants , or rather relics of such objects , were suspended on temporary gibbets , or on the trees , which had been allowed to remain standing , only , it would seem , to serve the convenience of the executioners . Living creatures they saw none , excepting those wild denizens of nature who seemed silently resuming the now wasted district , from which they might have been formerly expelled by the course of civilization .