As for the girl Yeoland, she was very devout, very enthusiastic, but no Agnes. Her rosary had little rest, and with the suspicions of one not utterly sure of herself, she had striven to make religion and its results satisfy her soul. In some measure she had succeeded. Yet there is ever that psychic echo, that one mysterious being, subtle as the stars, that may come before Christ in the heart. Transcendent spirit of idolatry! And yet it is often heaven-sent, seeing that it leads many a soul to God. It had become Yeoland’s custom to walk daily in the pine wood at the foot of the stairway leading from the northern room. She had discovered a quaint nook, a mile or more from the cliff, a nook where trees stood gathered in a dense circle about a grassy mound capped by a square of mouldering stone. It was a grave, nameless and without legend. Perhaps a hermit had crumbled away there under the sods, or the bones of some old warrior slept within rusty harness. None knew, none cared greatly. Fulviac’s men had hinted at treasure, yet even they were kept from desecrating the place by a crude and superstitious veneration for the dead. She had wandered here one day and had settled herself on the grassy slope of the grave. The ribbon of her lute lay over her shoulder. A breeze sang fitfully through the branches, and a golden haze shimmered down as from the clerestory windows of a cathedral. Her lute seemed sad when it made answer to her fingers. Thought was plaintive and not devotional, if one might judge by the mood of the music, and the notes were wayward and pathetically void of discipline. It was while the girl thrummed idly at the strings that a vague sound floated down to her with the momentary emphasis born of a fickle wind. It was foreign to the forest, or it would not have roused her as it did. As she listened the sound came again from the west. It was neither the distant bay of a hound nor a horn’s solitary note. There was something metallic about it, something musical. When it disappeared, she listened for its recurrence; when she heard it again, she puzzled over its nature. The sound grew clearer at gradual intervals, and then ceased utterly. The girl listened for a long while to no purpose, and then prepared to forget the incident. The decision was premature. She was startled anon by the sound breaking out at no great distance. There was no doubt as to its nature: it was the clanging of a bell. Yeoland wondered who could be carrying such a thing in such a place. Possibly some of Fulviac’s men were coming home with stolen cattle, and an old bell-wether from some wild moorland with them.