“I mind me now,” replied Geoffrey, wringing his hands in misery, “she ever went on Saturdays to tend my brother’s grave at Lanton, two miles from our gates and on the forest’s edge. She was used to take an ample guard; but to-day I have taken nearly all our men-of-arms for this expedition. She liked it not that I should come; and now she has ventured forth without escort and to my everlasting sorrow. Oh, that _bloody_ villain!” “Hush, Sir Geoffrey,” said my father quickly, his face working in sympathy with the lad’s sore distress, “they shall not harm thy lady mother. If need be, and no other way will serve, we will e’en release our prisoners and thus pay her ransom.” A mutter of discontent from some of the other leaders followed this, and Dunwoodie spoke full surlily: “Seven of my good yeomen have already been slain in this quarrel; divers of our friends have lost men also, and Lord Pelham hath been borne homewards with an arrow wound that came near to being mortal. Shall we have nothing for all this but the freeing of these varlets?” “What would’st thou do then, Dunwoodie,—leave the Lady of Carleton in the hands of the outlaws?” Dunwoodie only growled in reply; and soon my father spoke again, this time to the outlaw messengers: “Go to your chief,” he said, “and say that we consider his offer, but that if the Lady of Carleton or her attendants be harmed one whit, we will hunt him and all his followers to the death e’en if that hunting takes a thousand men and a year’s campaigning. Let him look to it.” The messengers bowed again and made their way into the deeps of the forest. My father and the nobles that were there gathered about the camp fire in deep discussion of this sore dilemma. CHAPTER VIII—“THE FORTRESS OF THE MONKSLAYER” Cedric plucked at my sleeve and drew me aside. “Thou and Sir Geoffrey come with me a little,” he whispered, “I have somewhat to say on this.” Quickly I sought out Geoffrey, and led him away into the bracken in which Cedric had already disappeared. A bow-shot away from the camp we came up with him. “Sir Richard,” he said, speaking far more quickly than was his wont. “I have a thought of the whereabouts of this fastness that the robber speaks of in his letter.” My heart leaped within me. “Hast thou, Cedric?” I cried. “If any one of all our company should know, it would be thou who art native to these woods and knowest them as the very deer that run them.” “Aye,” he replied shortly, “I believe ’tis not two miles hence. What say’st thou? Shall we reconnoiter?” “With all my heart,” I answered. Geoffrey drew his cross-bow cord and placed a bolt in groove. “Lead on, Cedric,” he said in a low voice. “I will follow thee if ’tis to a lion’s den.” “Come then,” replied Cedric, and moved away through the underwood.