“O, a wise lady! A reasonable lady! But you will be cold before you get thither. There will be a frost ere morn. So, when I saw you run out, I caught up something to put over you.” Torfrida shuddered, as Martin wrapped her in the white bearskin. “No! Not that! Anything but that!” and she struggled to shake it off. “Then you will be dead ere dawn. Folks that run wild in the forest thus, for but one night, die!” “Would God I could die!” “That shall be as He wills; you do not die while Martin can keep you alive. Why, you are staggering already.” Martin caught her up in his arms, threw her over his shoulder as if she had been a child, and hurried on, in the strength of madness. At last he stopped at a cottage door, set her down upon the turf, and knocked loudly. “Grimkel Tolison! Grimkel, I say!” And Martin burst the door open with his foot. “Give me a horse, on your life,” said he to the man inside. “I am Martin, Hereward’s man, upon my master’s business.” “What is mine is Hereward’s, God bless him,” said the man, struggling into a garment, and hurrying out to the shed. “There is a ghost against the gate!” cried he, recoiling. “That is my matter, not yours. Get me a horse to put the ghost upon.” Torfrida lay against the gate-post, exhausted now; but quite unable to think. Martin lifted her on to the beast, and led her onward, holding her up again and again. “You are tired. You had run four miles before I could make you hear me.” “Would I had run four thousand.” And she relapsed into stupor. They passed out of the forest, across open wolds, and at last down to the river. Martin knew of a boat there. He lifted her from the horse, turned him loose, put Torfrida into the boat, and took the oars. She looked up, and saw the roofs of Bourne shining white in the moonlight. And then she lifted up her voice, and shrieked three times: “Lost! Lost! Lost!” with such a dreadful cry, that the starlings whirred up from the reeds, and the wild-fowl rose clanging off the meres, and the watch-dogs in Bourne and Mainthorpe barked and howled, and folk told fearfully next morning how a white ghost had gone down from the forest to the fen, and wakened them with its unearthly cry. The sun was high when they came to Crowland minster. Torfrida had neither spoken nor stirred; and Martin, who in the midst of his madness kept a strange courtesy and delicacy, had never disturbed her, save to wrap the bear-skin more closely over her. When they came to the bank, she rose, stepped out without his help, and drawing the bear-skin closely round her, and over her head, walked straight up to the gate of the house of nuns. All men wondered at the white ghost; but Martin walked behind her, his left finger on his lips, his right hand grasping his little axe, with such a stern and serious face, and so fierce an eye, that all drew back in silence, and let her pass. The portress looked through the wicket.