Swartz was laconic, implacable. He had made himself a little peephole by loosening some of the stones with his dagger and levering them out. This squint of his commanded the beech wood, and he watched it like a dog waiting for a rat. “Thunder!” Martin turned and saw him kneeling with his eye close to the hole. His lips were stretched tight over his teeth. “Are you behind me, man? What do you see?” Martin faced sharply toward the beech wood. A man had ridden out from the shade—a man in a red doublet slashed and puffed with blue, a red hat on his head, his legs and thighs cased in white armor. He was a very tall man, and he sat his horse with a certain swaggering grace. In his right hand he carried a light switch. Swartz spat hate at him. “Hell hound, swaggerer, bully.” Martin looked puzzled. “I have not seen that fellow before.” “And I have seen him too often. What, you have lived in these parts and know not Messire Fulk de Lisle?” Martin’s forehead wrinkled itself. “Fulk de Lisle! A great gentleman in my Lord of Troy’s service.” “A great gentleman! God help you, Martin Valliant, and God help— Enough. This clinches it. I have often itched to cut that man’s throat, though I have served with him.” Martin Valliant’s eyes filled with a sudden fury of understanding. “Why is he here?” “To play any devil’s trick that pleases him. You do not know Messire Fulk de Lisle. Rich is a saint beside him. The debonair, filthy, malicious devil! Why, I could tell you— Oh! to hell with the beast!” He twisted around and looked up into Martin Valliant’s face. “Man, can you stand torture?” “Speak out!” “Supposing he brings the child—and tries to break you by—shaming her?” Martin’s face was like a white flame. “God! It’s beyond belief! Why should he?” Swartz grimaced. “Because he is Fulk de Lisle; because he has a foul cleverness and a liking for such things. My Lord of Troy would laugh at such a comedy. God and the Saints, I wonder now why I have lived with such men!” _Chapter XXVIII_ Mellis lay in a patch of young bracken in a little glade among the beech trees. They had tied her feet together, but left her hands free, after searching her and taking away her poniard. Five paces away a man stood on guard—a man with the beard of a goat and stupid eyes hard as gray stones out of a brook. Mellis lay very still, the fronds of the fern arching over her and throwing little flecks of shadow on her face. But though her bosom hardly betrayed her breathing, and her hands lay motionless among the bracken stems, all that was quick and vital in her lived in her eyes. The pupils were big and black and sensitive with fear, wild, tremulous eyes in a white and anguished face.