Not till he had crawled to the edge of the beech wood did Martin Valliant realize what the valley held. A broad mere lay in a grassy hollow, shaded toward the north by willows, and ringed about with yellow flags and water herbs. An island seemed to float upon the water, all white with old fruit trees in bloom. A gray turret and the bare stone gable-ends of a house showed above the apple blossom. There was a little gate-house close to the water, but its roof was gone, and the bridge that had led to it ruinous. The charred rafters of a barn showed beyond the sweep of an ivy-covered wall. Martin could trace the suggestions of a garden, with old yew trees, hornbeam hedges all gone to top, and a broad terrace walk that looked as though it were paved with stone. The place had a still, sweet, tragic look, lying there in the deeps of the Forest, its fruit trees white with blossom, although no one had pruned them, and the fruit they bore would rot in the grass or be eaten by the birds. Martin Valliant was so astonished by what he saw, so bewitched by the desolate beauty of the place, that he had almost forgotten Mellis. She had reached the edge of the water and was standing by a willow, looking across at the ruined house. A sudden awe seemed to steal into Martin’s eyes. Mystery! And she was the human part of it, wandering by Forest ways to this island of beautiful desolation. No chance quest had brought her to the place, and Martin, lying there with his chin on his hands, felt a strange stirring in his heart. Perhaps she had lied to him—but what then? The very thought of it quickened his compassion. In following her he had stumbled upon the real woman—a woman whose eyes were deep with unforgettable things. The truth came to him like the opening of a book. Tags of gossip tossed to and fro across the refectory table at Paradise pieced themselves together. Woodmere, the Dales’ house, sacked and burned by Roger Bland of Troy Castle; old Dale with a spear through his body lying dead under an oak tree. Blood shed for the love of a red rose. Two children saved by a swineherd and shipped off in a fishing-boat from Gawdy Town. Woodmere rotting in the Forest, to please the Lord of Troy’s sneering and whimsical pride! Mellis had wandered along to what had been the bridge. Two spans of it still stood, but the center arch had been thrown down, leaving a gap of twelve feet or more. Young trees had taken possession of the broken walls, and the bridge-head was choked with brambles. There was no way of crossing the gap save by thrusting a big beam or the trunk of a tree across it, and such a piece of bridge mending was wholly beyond a woman’s strength. Moreover, there was a second chasm to be crossed where the drawbridge had been worked from the gate-house, but the drawbridge was a thing of the past. Roger Bland had had it unchained and unbolted and dragged to Troy Castle as a trophy.