Kate knelt there, her arms folded across her bosom. Her brown eyes had grown big and solemn, more like the eyes of a child. She looked at Martin Valliant, and her awe of him was mingled with a strange, choking tenderness. How long would he hang there? How long would he endure? He had only to place his feet upon the oak stool in order to rest himself to show some mercy to his body. But the soul of the man welcomed pain. His eyes looked steadily toward the sea with an obstinate tranquillity that made her marvel at his patience. The day was far spent and the sun low in the west, and as the sun sank lower it fell behind the cross and showed like a halo about Martin Valliant’s head. The glare was in Kate’s eyes, so that the cross and the man hanging upon it were no more than a black outline. How long would he endure? How would it end? And then, of a sudden, the eyes of her soul were opened. She was no longer the laughing wench in love with the shape of a man. She saw something noble hanging there against the sunset, a figure that was like the figure of the Christ. She flung herself on her face, and wept for Martin and her own heart. There was no escape from the truth. It was she who had crucified him, put him to this torment. The sun had touched the hills and there was a wonderful golden radiance covering the earth as she rose up with wet eyes, and hastened toward the cross. She went on her knees, kissed the man’s feet, and wiped away the mark of her kisses with her hair. “I will go,” she said, bowing her head. “If I have sinned against your holiness, Martin Valliant, forgive me—because I love you.” He looked down at her and smiled, though his arms felt as though they were being torn from their sockets. “Who am I that I should forgive you, sister? Sometimes it is good to suffer. Go back to Paradise.” She rose up and left him, running wildly down the long slope of the moor, not daring to let herself look back. “He shall suffer no more for my sake,” she kept saying to herself, and all the while she was weeping and wishing herself dead. _Chapter VIII_ Roger Bland, my Lord of Troy, rode back from hunting in the Forest. Dan Love, his huntsman, had sent word that morning that he had found the slot of a hart down by Darvel’s Holt, and that the beast lay close in one of the thickets. My Lord of Troy had gone out with his hounds and gentlemen, hunted the hart, and slain him. He was riding home in the cool of the evening, the sunlight shining on his doublet of green cloth of gold, its slashed sleeves puffed with crimson, as though striped with blood.