"The Countess Adela of Ger has a face like a horse!"

Black-haired Rogier spoke reflectively, with no intent to wound. Red-haired Thorismund took no notice; he was leaning over the low wall of the fish-pond, spitting with precision at the water-lily leaves below. But Raoul propped against the trunk of the nearest tall sycamore behind them, gasped and sat upright, hardly believing his ears. Then he waited for Thorismund to turn on Rogier; and Thorismund continued to collect saliva with all the gravity of eleven summers. The Countess Adela was Thorismund's great-aunt and Raoul's grandmother; she it was who gave Raoul the knife with which he carved toy ships from odds and ends of wood collected in the monastery workshop.

A moment more, and Raoul got to his feet, sliding the cherished blade into its sheath at his belt, and hiding a tiny cherished blade into its sheath at his belt, and hiding a tiny half-shaped boat amid the spreading roots beside him. His queer little face had flushed and greyed beneath its ivory brown skin; fists clenched, eyes glaring at the tense hindquarters of the unconscious Rogier, he stepped softly forward...

At Sanctalbastre time was bounded by the monastery bells, space by the blue mountains of Baraine and by the roofs and spires of Hautarroy. The minster, with its precious relic--a shard of that vessel broken by Saint Mary Magdalen above the head of Sieur Jesus--towered between moat and river, on a wedge of fertile silt beneath the royal fortress of Ingard; and on a night soon after his twelfth birthday Raoul dreamed that the river-banks were widened, and that island, castle, monastery and all were sailing merrily southward against the stream ... and then awoke to hear the ivy hissing in the breeze outside the dormitory window, to see the moonlight eerie on the steep roof of the minster nave, and to remember that his uncle Armand, Count of Ger, was coming to the capital at the bidding of Rene the King...

At Marckmont were the marshes, and the four towers crowning the low mound above the causeway; there grey skies lowered, and at dusk the poplars swayed against yellow streaks westward. There, too, the land ran strangely in long wooded flats and shoals amid the water; in misty autumn weather all the light was doubled by reflection, and at a breath of wind everything trembled upside down. It was a silent, happy place, for in the castle above the sleepy hamlet were only Countess Adela and a handful of old servants, with grizzled men-at-arms who remembered the battle at Harksburg, when the King was captured and the army ran away. That king was grandmother's brother; King Rene was her nephew. Marckmont, once of the king's demesne, was granted to the Countess Adela and to the heirs of the body of her younger son; one day it would be Raoul's own...

At Ger, where the grey hold stood out upon terrifying crags, was never any silence; there the waves came shouldering slantwise into the eastern cove, thumping ceaselessly amid the caves, or hurling tall shapes of spray against the dark cliff-walls and across the breakwater that masked the little harbour on the western side. There sea-gulls wheeled and screamed, and mists marched over the inland heather, and men cursed as they watched, from battlemented wall or dizzy window-slit, the dim shape of an Easterling pirate scudding far out along the lonely coast...

Bur Ger and Marckmont were year-old memories; Raoul was one of a score of noble ragamuffins who the monks of Sanctalbastre strove to rear in ways acceptable to God and to the Neustrian king. Half the boys were nothing less than hostages for good behaviour; King Rene was old and fat, but he knew his Counts of Barberghe, Montecarneweu and Ger. The brief and ghastly Jacquerie of Nordanay had somewhat sobered these restive lords; the Constable, who marched to their assistance, found no difficulty in returning with the heir of each house suspect of flirtation with archducal powers beyond the frontier. So Sanctalbastre had become a school; the King had placed therein his nephew Thorismund, Duke of Hastain and heir presumptive to the throne, and sons and wards of this and that great officer of state had followed Thorismund. So arrived Rogier de Olencourt, brother of Fulk the Castellan of Montenair. Presently from the south came Conrad, son of the Countess of Burias--Conrad, whose birth had so enraged the Count that the latter promised his lady a dozen lashes for each month of the year he had spent away from her when the event occurred. But King Rene intervened, taking mother and child under his own protection; and then the Count of Burias died of a fever in foreign parts. As for little Conrad, the older he grew the more the King regarded him and loved him; but he and his mother were ignored by the Prince Rene and hated by the Queen...

Last of all, Raoul, called of Marckmont, was brought to Sanctalbastre by his grandmother, who welcomed an alternative to placing him in the household of her elder son, Armand, the ruling Count of Ger. Failing Raoul and his sons, Marckmont would revert to the crown, and Armand of Ger was in no way his nephew's heir--a fact which angered him, but also, in feudal law, gave him a claim to wardship as the boy's non-inheriting next-of-kin. This claim, however, Armand did not press whilst his own son Charles was beneath the eye of the King at Sanctalbastre; moreover, whilst the Countess Adela lived he had no right to administer the barony. Being hasty as well as avaricious, he had once audibly wished his nephew in hell; thereafter the old Countess had kept Raoul out of her son's way. Nevertheless, the time came when Armand of Ger, having obeyed the summons to Hautarroy, rode down from Ingard to the monastery gate and sent for son and nephew.

They came, an ill-assorted pair. Charles was ruddy and round and dull, taller by half a head than his companion. Raoul was pale and slim; at Sanctalbastre he was sometimes called Gipsy, because of his faintly Eastern cast of features, and because he was born in Egypt, during the siege of Ajetta; but his parents, before they died, saw in their son a strange resemblance to that great stone devil which sat, hands on knees, staring out across the ruined temple-court where Raoul first drew breath--the great stone devil with the weird half-smile, who took no heed of woman's travail in the shadow, or of knights and emirs at death-grips in blazing sunlight by the water-gate two hundred years beyond. For Raoul, as he grew, showed the same forward slant of a narrowing chin, the same big delicately-chiselled mouth with its hint of a smile at the corners, the same broad forehead and high cheek-bones, the same deftly-tilted eyelids; but there was nothing of the devil of Ajetta in his eyes. The latter were wide and strange, being grey-green with little amber flecks in them. Thorismund of Hastain called them cat's eyes, and already most women looked twice at them; but at this time they were disproportionately large, making of the heir of Marckmont a blend of elf and owl and boy...

And into those same timid eyes Count Armand looked with less than his former disfavour, for that morning had healed the breach between himself and the King's Majesty; the Count of Ger would return to his eyrie as Warden of the Coat March.

"Less muscle than I hoped to find in either of you," was his comment. "You, Charles, are flabby; and you, Raoul, are puny. Dough may be turned to account, but thin air may not. Do you run and wrestle when you should?"

The question was aimed at Raoul, who stood tongue-tied with downcast face. The plump Viscount sniggered and spoke.

"Half his time he spends in fashioning toys or reading books. But it is true that only Conrad beats him at archery."

"So? But the book is for clerks, and the bow for churls. What of the quintain?"

Charles laughed aloud, and went on:

"A week ago he was knocked clean out of his saddle, and lay down all the afternoon!"

Raoul's head came up; a spot of colour showed on each cheek-bone, and his big mouth twitched.

"I ride as well as you," he muttered.

"Better than I," amended his good-natured cousin. "But I can take a fall more featly."

"More fatly also," was the Count's gruff rejoinder. "Boy, when I come again you ride with me to Ger. As for Raoul, he seems headed for the cloister. But maybe I shall yet make men of both of you."

Then he gave them his hand to kiss, and mounted and rode away, a masterful figure in the sunlight; and more than once in the fortnight that followed Raoul had marvelled that this grim Count, with his crimson face and blue-black jowl and six tough feet of body should be the father of the placid Charles, and should himself have once been a boy who sat on grandmother's knee.

The Countess Adele was the only person alive whom Raoul both loved and trusted, unless it were Brother Ambrose (who had been to Rome, Jerusalem, and Constantinople, and was full of strange lore); and a sense of appalling outrage informed the kick which shattered the peace of afternoon beside the monastery fish-pond...

Rogier yelped and spun round, staring. No one at Sanctalbastre took much notice of Raoul; Rogier was thirteen, waspish if attacked, and the rival of Conrad of Burias for leadership among the boys. But no one had before seen Roul's face grey with fury; and curiosity held Rogier rooted for a moment to the ground.

"You--you said--" snarled the diminutive attacker.

Rogier's surprise vanished. Rogier was a youth of few words.

"Yes, little pig, I did," came his crisp affirmation.

And the battle was joined before another word escaped them.

"Hi! Hi! Conrad--Alain--everybody!" squealed Thorismund, capering joyfully round the combatants. "Rogier and Raoul are having a fight! Come on! Ahoo, smack in the eye!"

A dozen other boys appeared amid the monastery barns or among the beechwoods above the pond; laughing and whooping they plunged down the slope to ring the fighters round, some cheering one and some the other. Rogier was not having it all his own way; his bleeding lip matched Raoul's half-closed eye before height and weight began to tell.

Conrad of Burias stood in doubt, contemptuous of Raoul yet bearing no good-will toward Rogier. Conrad's faction, however, was of one mind, yelling shame on Rogier for his advantages and the time it took for him to show them. Sly Robin Barberghe and beautiful Alain de Montcarneau ranged themselves as Raoul's backers; and presently Robin was fingering a skipping-rope and whispering in Conrad's ear. Rogier had Raoul's head beneath his arm, and the smaller boy was crying and choking with rage and pain, when Conrad gave the word for action.

"Stop it, you coward, you hulking bully!" he shouted. "Stop it ... very well, we'll see how you enjoy a thump or two yourself."

The conflict underwent a sudden transformation. Conrad gave Rogier a dexterous shove, Robin tripped him, two others sat on him' Alain twitched Raoul from his conqueror's grasp and thrust an arm in front of the advancing Thorismund. Deftly the phalanx closed on its struggling victim; the skipping-rope flew free and tightened...

"Ramon--Enguerrand!" screeched the little Duke, battering with ineffectual fists at the laughing Alain. "Rescue--rescue! They're going to torture Rogier!"

But Rogier's friends needed no such summons; a noisy mellay locked round the beech-trunk to which the captors strove to tie their prisoner. Raoul, crouching by the wall, paused in his angry sobbing, and saw his cousin Charles come lumbering up amid the straggling reserves. Charles was of Conrad's party, but in this fray he served it ill; someone immediately winded him with a shrewd thrust amidships, and he collapsed, to sit up later and watch the fight laughter and applause...

Rogier's followers were losing ground, and Rogier was bound and helpless, when Raoul got to his feet again. What made him do it he never knew...

Frgier, finding his late opponent's tear-stained face twelve inches from his own, gave a grunt of wrathful scorn.

"Go on, sneak! Hit me now I can't hit back!"

But Rogier's knife was out, and Raoul was hacking at the rope when Robin Barberghe leaped upon him from behind and tore the weapon away, flinging it into the reeds and kneeling fiercely on the ingrate's spine ... whence Rogier, breaking free with a yell, plucked him to bowl him bodily at Alain. The two of them went down in a heap, and Rogier turned raging on the rest of his would-be tormentors. He knocked Conrad flat on his back, butted another assailant in the stomach and sent hi reeling and hiccoughing to the water's edge, and lifted his head for a whoop of victory which was never uttered.

For above him on the grassy slope was a blaze of scarlet and a glitter of steel; three men had come unnoticed through the beechwood and out upon the scene of conflict. Raoul, still whimpering as he rubbed his bruises, became aware of Rogier's urgent voice.

"Pax, pax, you fools! Get up, Alain--Ramon, leave him alone! The Cardinal Count is here--the Cardinal Count!"

As though by magic came silence and an end of strife. Up the summer wind rolled a soft tide of sound--the tolling of the great cathedral bells of Hautarroy. A battered, sheepish rank of boys took shape beneath the calm stare of the Cardinal Count of Estragon; neither the disdainful smile of the tall Duke of Camors on one side, not the scandalised frown of the mild Sub-Prior of Sanctalbastre on the other, had power to draw the awed gaze of a single boy from the parchment face of the little Prince of the Church.

The red robes stirred; gems flashed on a thin raised hand. Down bobbed a score of tousled heads before the sign of the Cross. By twos and threes they were raised again; the prominent grey eyes of the Cardinal count searched once along the line, and came to rest on the brightest head of all. A moment more, and his quiet melancholy voice went fluting up against the distant bourdon of the bells.

"Peace be with you, children. And among you. Let the Prince Thorismund stand forward."

A green-clad figure moved. Beneath the flaming hair was tilted a puzzled and obedient face. Those furthest away craned their necks. Prince Thorismund? He was prince, of course, but his style was always Duke...

"My lord Prince, I and my lord Constable are sent to acquaint you with grievous news, and to bring you before the King's Majesty that now has need of you. To-day, it had pleased God to smite with a great affliction this kingdom and this people. An hour before noon, as he hunted in the Forest of Ecquerel, the Prince Rene was thrown from his horse and fell with violence, so that in a few moments he was dead. I charge you, my lord Prince--and you, my lord's companions--pray for his soul, who was the flower of this great realm. Pray too, each one of you, that if death come thus suddenly upon yourself, your name may be as fair as his among men and with the Blessed Saints."

Thorismund gulped audibly, and blinked to check his tears. He was proud and selfish, but he had loved his jolly, noisy cousin.

"Bid your friends farewell, my lord and come."

The little duke wheeled, displaying wet blue eyes in a tragical pink face.

"I do not want to go away!" he announced angrily.

Into the momentary pause that followed came the excited whisper of Conrad of Burias.

"But now you will be King."

The Cardinal Count gave the whisperer a blank sidelong glance. The Duke of Camors smiled in his grey beard. But Thorismund, squaring his shoulders, took no notice.

"Farewell, all," he said. And then, less bravely: "Farewell, Rogier."

"Farewell, Thorismund," came the ragged twentyfold reply.

More like a prisoner than an heir-apparent, the dejected prince trudged away between the scarlet and the steel. Behind him erstwhile friend and foe stood at gaze or gathered in chattering groups; but Raoul sneaked off to find his precious knife, and presently was gravely whittling at his boat again...

It was not long before a shadow fell across his hands. He looked up savagely; Rogier de Olencourt stood near, thumbs hooked in his belt, grey eyes quizzical but not unfriendly.

"Why did you cut me loose?" he demanded curiously.

Raoul coloured up and looked uncomfortably aside.

"It was not fair," he mumbled. "Four to one, to begin with at least. And they pretended they were rescuing me, but they were not really. And then Alain is a brute, and Robin a sneak. Besides ... I liked you till this afternoon."

It was Rogire's turn to colour up. He moved a step nearer.

"I am sorry, Raoul. I take back what I said ... both times."

The sulky elfin face, with its discoloured eye and stains of earth and tears, came up; Raoul smiled. That sudden bewitching grin was too much for Rogier; he stooped and hugged the smaller boy round the shoulders. Clumsily they kissed each other on the mouth; then Rogier straightened himself.

"Now we shall always be friends," he said.

Then he went gravely away; and behind him Raoul drew a deep shuddering breath and went on with his task. The solemn bells, the strange news, Thorismund's going, the gentleness of Rogier's bruised lips, whirled together in his head; bright blade and grubby fingers curved about the work, and Raoul was happy.

Happy, but not for long. His thoughts ranged backward ... till suddenly his hands were still, and he looked up again. Throughout his life he was doomed to suffer from acute perception of uncomfortable truth; and this, the first occasion of those subtle woundings, struck him rigid with bewilderment and pain.

He had done right. He had done the brave and honourable thing. He had forced Rogier--since Rogier was amenable to generosity--to unsay his words. But the more he thought of the occasion of the quarrel, the clearer the fact became that however kind and dear and splendid she might be, the Countess Adela of Ger had, had, had a face like a horse.

"My lord Count, if Charles may go to the tourney at Belsaunt, why may not I?"

Raoul spoke beseechingly. He was just seventeen, and had lived three months in wardship to his uncle. To the grief of his grandmother's death had succeeded the pain of leaving Marckmont and the shock of his reception at Ger; a dreamer whose frequent desire was to be alone found little comfort in the castle of the Warden of the Coast March. Outside the spring gales howled along the coast; on hearth and at board the gentle face and manners of Raoul provoked derision. Count and Countess let their contempt of him be seen, and forthwith men-at-arms growled in his hearing that women's care made a wench of him; pages grew insolent, servants moved slowly to do his bidding, and only the Viscount Charles displayed goodwill--Charles, who was far too indolent to bestir himself on behalf of another. Charles it was who told his cousin of the Count's decision; Raoul had never doubted that he, too, would see the tilting at Belsaunt, and genuine astonishment projected him into his uncle's presence.

Count Armand, closeted in the winter parlour with his brother-in-law, the Count of Barberghe, looked up; in the space of a silent half-minute his hard blue eye reduced his nephew's surprise to discomfiture.

"Since my lord Baron thus breaks in upon us, Barberghe," he said at length, laying down his pen, "we can only postpone our poor duties to attend upon his pleasure."

Crimsoning at his kinsman's tone, Raoul flung up his head.

"It is not my fault that I am a baron," he protested.

The beginnings of a vulpine Bargerghe grin attested this revelation of youthful insight; the Count of Ger leaned forward and brought a great fist slowly down upon the table.

"Nor mine, by the blood of the Pope!" he growled. "To my own house, and in this hold, and up and down these coasts, I give no reason for the asking. Yet since you are my brother's son--I had his word for it, or, seeing the whelp you are, it were a matter of sore doubt--I tell you this. Your Marckmont is a barony of sand and water; under my mother its steward was thriftless or a thief. I will not spend its yield of half a year in mounting and equipping one who seems so little likely to benefit by sight of tourney. Do you thing to ride in the squire's mellay--you, whom the wind of a backhanded blow from my son Charles, or from my lord's son Robin, would unhorse?"

"It is true Charles is too heavy for me, but Robin I will any day--"

"Begone!"

The sudden bellow of wrath blew Raoul like a leaf from the room. He climbed to the battlements, and cursed and cried a little in the gust rain.

"If father were alive he would not dare--they would none of them treat me as they do," he told himself. "Must I stick a dagger in someone before they will leave me alone? Why did grandmother teach me courtesy, knowing what sort of churl I must live among until I am of age? Another year of this ... and first, I must learn to kill animals as though I liked it."

A memory came to him of the cloisters at Sanctalbastre, with the kind eyes of Brother Ambrose peering across the garth as he repeated Raoul's question.

"Why do men like killing, boy? Because it is an usurpation of the power of God. What God began, they have ended; red with the mortal sin of murder, they feel godlike power, and fall into the mortal sin of pride."

"But wicked men, Brother, ... they must sometimes be slain..."

"Yes, or the good would perish from the earth. Yet the slaying of men is forever ignoble. When you ride against the wicked, Raoul, let your work be swift and sorrowful. Guard against glee in torment or in killing; for in cruelty is all things most abominable."

"But animals ... the mysteries of woods and rivers ... are they cruel?"

"Only as life is cruel. Call off your hounds, and the boar will one day meet his rival and go down. The crippled wolf is torn by the pack with which he hunted. Children must play unafraid in the village streets. Roads and crops must be guarded. And as for flesh and fish to eat ... I know a boy who is inordinately fond of salmon."

Raoul had laughed, but the old monk's words stayed with him. He had remembered them when, rocking with the hunt through the forest towards Guarenal, he came upon a kill, and saw his cousin Charles dismounted and transfigured--bright-eyed, exultant, with a great splash of boar's blood on his cheek, a reeking spear in his uplifted hand, and a disembowelled dog between his feet. And now, with the breakers surging and spurting far below him, Raoul remembered the words again, and shrugged impatient shoulders.

"I am a fool, I suppose. But I could never enjoy the chase at Marckmont; falconry is better, but here you must be smothered in blood before they think you are a man."

With which reflection he turned from the damp embrasure and dived morosely down a turret-stair. Gaining his own small chamber, he bolted the door against intrusion, and dragged from behind the ancient hangings a bundle wrapped in a cloak. This bundle he had hidden when, after his arrival the thin-lipped Countess (a Barberghe of the Barberghes) bade him lay out his clothing for her scrutiny; when sick for Marckmont he had several times unrolled it, finding comfort in these things that came thence and were his very own. A short-sleeved shirt of fine link-mail two sizes too large for him, a plain sword and sheath that had been his father's with a sword-belt of coloured leather and a silver-hilted dagger murderously sharp--these were his principal treasures. There was also a wallet containing a purse and a small ballad-book which the Countess Adela brought with her to Ger when, fifty years before, she fled with the great Count Bors from Hautarroy. And now the ballad-book was come again to Ger; each word in it was copied by the Countess Adela herself, and a faint perfume clung about its mouldering cover of undressed hide...

Raoul sniffed at it, squatting limply on the great press at the foot of his bed. Immediately he was at Marckmont, gaily picking his way on stilts amid the half-drowned sedges where the marsh-fowl nested ... going home to bathe in a noble tub where no daft page would snigger at his scraggy ribs, and no fat, serving-girl would blunder in upon him as though by accident, backing out with a squeal of mock alarm, yet finding time to feast her little pig's eyes on his shrinking body ... going home to sup with the Countess Adela, and afterward to sit on a cushion by her chair, plucking at his lute-strings or reading the ballads aloud, pausing to look up into the fierce old face--a face like bronze in candlelight and firelight...

The embroidered purse clinked as he opened it; its contents, emptied on the dark oak of the press, gleamed and glittered in the dull light of the dreary room. There were two gold rings--a signet bearing the swan of Marckmont, and a thinner loop giving rise to a falcon's claw that gripped and partly covered a cut sapphire. There were a dozen gold nobles and a few silver florins, an amulet or two, a string of amber beads with a little pectoral crucifix--a golden figure on a dross of jet--and a tiny image of Our Lady, carved in ivory, that Raoul's mother had worn around her neck through the heat and dust and agony of Ajetta, Raoul fingered it lovingly, staring down at the smiling ivory face. Its beauty was the same as ever, but life was very different...

"This Ger is a beastly and barbarian hold," he thought. "If ever the chance came I would startle them ... but that is folly, for I am not strong, except a little in my hands and arms, because I was born under the Sign of Gemini the Twins ... Sancta Maria, gratia plena, make me strong and brave. Amen.

"Perhaps my boorish lord intends not, spite, but thrift, for I know nothing of these costs and charges. Still it is hard not to go to Belsaunt, and to live here, where no one will even play chess with me ... and my lute will be spoiled at Marckmont, fool that I was to forget it ... and now I must go down and hear these Barberghes yelping, and see the pages wiping their noses on their sleeves in open hall."

He sighed, and put his gear away, high on the dusty sill of a bricked in window where bed-curtains and hangings hid it. Then slowly, he prepared himself to descend and carve at the board of the Count of Ger.

On the morning of departure for Belsaunt Raoul stood by the steps of the great hall, watching the last bustle of preparation. Forty feet above him a biting sea-wind drove across the battlements, but sunlight slanted warmly into the inner bailey, meeting everywhere the sable gerfalcon of Ger--on the drooping banner of cloth of gold, on the yellow surcoats of the men-at-arms, on the gaily-painted horse-litters which would carry the countesses and their women, and on the device of tinted stone which capped the arch of the hall doorway. Steel glittered, silk and velvet shone, coat of charger and pack-horse glistened black and bay and chestnut; even the stable-dunghill gave hues of straw and brown and amber, as though for a background to the russet sheen of Robin Barberghe's marvellous new riding-boots, that came up to the thigh and were embroidered with crimson thread and clipped by silver spurs...

Since Robin learned that Raoul was to stay at Ger his sallow face had lit with malice when the younger boy came near. Raoul knew perfectly that Robin watched from his saddle for signs of disappointment; so he, Raoul, turned a bright and interested face this way and that, admiring the mustering cavalcade. Presently he caught, amid the din, the words which Robin flung over his shoulder to the Viscount Charles.

"'Ware gosling by the steps as you ride out," called Robin. "Someone left the gate of the poultry-run unlatched this morning."

Charles grinned, suspecting a jest. Raoul had actually peered among the horsehoofs before he took the allusion to himself and his heraldic swan. His lips tightened; threading his way sedately to Robin's stirrup. He paused and bent with simulated awe above the russet-covered foot. Then, straightening himself, he turned an anxious face to Charles.

"It is wise and seemly to draw attention from the other end of this chevalier," he cried, "But that tidy glory will never come off, unless it be by family enchantment. And what will the Jew say who lent it to him?"

Charles grinned again, for a female Barberghe of another branch had fled abroad to escape a charge of sorcery, and part of the Count's plate had been given as Jew's security for moneys to finance this present expedition; but Robin's face darkened, and he drew the tail of his riding-switch across the back of Raoul's neck.

"Get hence, little stay-at-home," he advised. "Get to your carving, poor little knave."

For answer, and before Robin could even raise the switch to strike, Raoul caught at the boot beside him, twitched the stirrup-iron from beneath the polished sole, and swung the spurred heel high in air, spilling the startled Viscount of Barberghe from his saddle into the drying edges of the dunghill.

"Fiend rip you up, you little viper!" screeched Robin, scrambling to his feet and tearing out his new dagger as though to make superfluous the invocation. But dismay at his plight halted him in his second stride; two pages of his father's household flung themselves with shocked faces and flapping hands upon their lord's soiled magnificence.

Raoul, white-faced and breathing hard, had backed to the steps. Charles rocked in his saddle with glee. A Barberghe man-at-arms took a threatening pace forward, but a tall archer of Ger lounged purposefully athwart his path. Across an eddy of laden pack-horses Raoul caught the eye of gaunt De Castlon, his uncle's chamberlain. De Castlon's long lip twitched; he made an imperative sideways gesture of the head. Raoul took the hint, and was halfway down the great hall before the Counts of Ger and Barberghe came out upon the steps; for those lords lingered in converse with the old Vice-Warden of the March--to whom, as the most-trusted man in Nordanay, and a former comrade of his father, Count Armand relegated such times as these the care of his official duties and the keeping of the hold of Ger.

From above the main gateway Raoul watched the head of the long column cross the isthmus, pass the barbican, and take the inland road towards the moors. The falcon of Ger, the chevrons of Barberghe, woke to the cold north-easter and danced above the slanting spears: in less than half an hour the last sparkle of steel had disappeared over the brow of the rise above Gramberge.

"They go by Hastain for the better road," thought Raoul.

He eyed the heathery wastes, the dip and spread of scurrying cloud-shadows, the tranquil little town across the harbour, the surges smoking in the eastern cove; and presently a great idea shook him. He gasped, caught at the cold iron of a cresset-foot, and glanced along the battlements to where two sentinel men-at-arms leaned on their spears.

"I am afraid to do it," he said darkly to himself. "I must do it, because I am afraid. Besides, grandmother used to say that I must always welcome a journey, because my birth-sign Gemini is ruled by Mercury, the planet kind to travellers ... and if Saturn was high at my birth, yet Mercury will bear me up against too much sadness."

"But, lad, I cannot give you leave," said the Baron de Guarenal, smiling and pulling at his white goat's beard. 'Your uncle told you nothing of his orders to you--indeed, he did not mention you--but there he is on the Hastain road, and here you are; the inference is plain."

"But, my lord, he did not forbid me to go to Belsaunt. He only said he would not be at the cost of taking me, because--because my lands are poor, he said...

The wrinkles deepened round the eyes of the old Vice-Warden. His thin red face was kindly; and he was Raoul's nearest kinsman on the distaff side, though the actual relationship was distant.

"Ger said that, did he? Well, he is careful of his own affairs, and no doubt extends a similar care to the affairs of his ward ... but clearly, my adventurous lording, I cannot sit on your uncle's chair and bid you flatly disobey a command inherent, if not expressed..."

"Then, my lord, I will not ask for your leave. I will ask you to let me go hunting in the forest."

"What, alone? No huntsmen, and no dogs?"

"Well ... if you should happen to ride out, my lord, with a falconer or two, and I were to--"

"God save me from conspiracy when you are of the covenant, lad. You mean you could disappear, and leave me to explain to your uncle's folk that a baron gone astray was no matter for search and outcry?"

"My lord, I may seem foolish, but I ... I beg you..."

"Grandfather, let him go! It is a shame he should be left behind! A mean man's chair is not the place for you ... stand up and tell him he can go!"

"Hey, now am I in trouble," sighed the old man, rounding stiffly on the newcomer.

Raoul, too, had turned at the interruption. A brown girl stood by the door. Beneath a round brown velvet cap her thick dark hair was square-cut like a boy's; her eyes were brown and friendly, her face sunburned and vivid--wide-browed, snub-nosed, with a full-lipped mouth and round advancing chin. Her velvet riding-frock was umber-coloured, and shortened to six inches below the knee; beneath it both high boots were spurred, for the new side-saddle was little used in Nordanay.

"This, lawless one, is Raoul, Baron of Marckmont," said the Vice-Warden, grimly; "and this, my lord, is my--my granddaughter Reine."

Raoul bowed; the girl inclined her head impatiently.

"You are cousins in the third degree," added the old man, twitching the lower half of his nose sideways in a fashion twice observed by Raoul before he could believe it.

Reine sauntered across the room and perched on the table by De Guarenal's chair, looking down on its occupant with a smile that dealt Raoul a pleasurable wound. He was shy of girls, but this one interested him because she was affianced to his cousin Charles.

"Now why should I look forward this lording's fell design?" inquired the Vice-Warden, eyeing his grandchild with mock severity.

"Because you would have wanted to go at his age, dear lord and grandpa!"

"Umph ... yes, that should I." Then, turning to the expectant Raoul: "You know the roads are not of the healthiest for solitary travellers?"

"Till Guarenal the way is safe, my lord; and from Montenair to Belsaunt there are always pilgrims, and the Castellan's archers ride a league this side each day. Only from Guarenal to Montenair is there any risk; and even there, Saint-Aunay divides the journey. If I leave by noon I can make Saint-Aunay by sundown. And to-morrow the Count's people will be on the road."

"H'm. It could be done. Have you a horse?"

"Yes. Of my own." (This was Babee, a bay from Marchmont.)

"Arms and money?"

"Sufficient."

"And you are not afraid of Joris of the Rock or of Lorin de Campscapel?"

"Not until I see them, my lord."

But the names of the infamous outlaw and the Count of Alanol struck chilly amid Roul's self-conceit.

"Would you like to examine the view from Chateau Guarenal?" demanded the Vice-Warden gruffly.

Raoul hesitated, not yet sure of this red-faced old war-captain; and Reine sniffed.

"Go on, stupid; say yes," she urged.

"Yes ... why, yes, my lord."

"Then go and look at it," came the command. "Three of my men ride thither in half an hour's time. You will accompany them; and then my steward will have orders to entertain you fittingly, to let you come or go as you desire. To-day is Monday; you must be here again be Saturday noon ... No, no, do not thank me; thank this imp here..."

Raoul seized the girl's hand between his own and wrung it joyously. Reine grimaced and dragged her fingers away.

"What a grip!" she exclaimed half-ruefully. "Farewell Joris of the Rock, if he tries a fall with you. But truly I had rather have my knuckles ground together thus than kissed by Robin Barberghe."

"Why, what has Robin done?" asked Raoul.

"Robin? I do not like him. He asked for my colours to wear at the tourney ... after kicking Charlemagne out of the room. Charlemagne is my little dog. He bit Robin, it is true. But I offended Robin by refusing twice. He was very angry, and very polite, and it was like a hot pudding on the back of my hand."

"But Charles should bear your favour," Raoul pointed out.

"Oh, Charles! He forgot to ask me for it."

"Robin is persevering in anything he undertakes," said the old baron mildly. "And not easily discouraged, I think. The Barberghe motto is Sursum Corda."

"Sursum Corda--up heart. Why, then"--Reine grinned like a boy--"then Robin's heart was in his boots this morning, just before he rode away."

Raoul was not displeased to know that she had seen proud Robin on the dunghill; but he began to be aware that his desire to reach the tourney was evaporation. Here at last was someone who seemed to approve of him.

"You must be moving, lad," said the Baron, glancing at the hour-glass on the table beside him. "As for you, Reine, do you not wish you had accepted the invitation of my lady of Ger?"

Raoul, half-way to the door, turned to hear the reply.

"No, my lord, not I. To see a great crowd of poor sweaty wretches smelling so that it is near death to cross the street; to see that sulky Castellan knock half-a-dozen boys out of their saddles, one after another, like pots off a shelf; to see Yolande de Volsberghe and Ermengarde de Saulte look murder up and down the barriers, each knowing that the other may be Queen of Beauty ... no, not while there are woods and streams in Nordanay."

De Guarenal chuckled, and again his nose twitched sideways at the tip. And Raoul went to his chamber, marvelling that anyone should not want to see the prowess of the Castellan or the faces of the rival beauties of the North.