This was the news which Puck brought home one day as he came to the noonday meal, and when he again went out to get further information, or, if possible, lend, unseen, a helping hand to the besiegers, Maude sat on the stone bench before the cottage, and tried to busy her trembling fingers with her spinning. But Puck was longer absent than usual, and she asked herself anxiously should she regard it as a good sign or the contrary. At last she could stand it no longer. She rose and went along the narrow path by which she had come to her place of refuge. She had never before ventured alone through those forest shades; but the birds sang sweetly as she passed along, and she thought their cheerful voices bid her hope. Soon she came to the scenes familiar to her from her childhood. Here was the place where Margaret used to sit and rest, and there--what memories filled her soul with sad emotion!--there was the old oak-stump on which she had sat by Gero's side, as he told her of the great world of which she knew so little. And now the eloquent mouth was silent, and her faithful page had fallen in her defence, for Puck, in all his journeys to the castle, had never seen Gero among the besiegers. She leant her head against a tree-stem, and wept long and bitterly. Then she raised her head to take one more look at the sacred spot. But were her tear-filled eyes deceiving her? There sat, as if lost in painful memories, a tall, manly form in gleaming armour, with a well-remembered sash of silver and blue across his breast. Maude uttered a cry. The knight raised his head, and she looked into a familiar, but now pale and grief-marked face. "Gero, Gero!" she cried, forgetting every other feeling in her wild delight, and rushing with outstretched arms to where he stood. The young knight's brain swam. At first he thought the sweet apparition must be his dear one's spirit; but no, he clasped in his arms the trembling form of the lost maiden. For one moment she lay sobbing on his breast; then, recollecting herself, she tore herself blushing from his arms. "Forgive me, Gero, my surprise overcame me. So you are alive, and I had mourned for you as dead." "Did you mourn for me, lady?" asked the young knight. "Thanks for the sweet assurance. I too sorrowed--oh! how deeply--for your loss; and to-day I rose from what I thought would be my death-bed, and came to visit the spot where we had spent so many happy hours together, here to indulge my grief undisturbed. The wicked Earl who caused our trouble fell to-day in the storming of his own castle, but great was our disappointment not to find you anywhere within its walls. And now you are here, and I am not deceived by a blessed dream!" "No, it is no dream," said Maude joyfully; "but now let us hasten to relieve my father's grief." As they went together through the wood, Maude told the knight how Puck had saved her, and how he had cared for her in the lonely valley.