Martin stared at him fixedly. “Why are you doing this?” “Why? Why do we eat and sleep, man? Because we must. To cheat that red rogue over there is as natural as eating. Thunder! but I have forgotten one thing. The girl would not be able to swim.” Martin hid his knowledge. “I could carry her over. That is nothing.” “Love could carry the moon! What say you to my plan, Martin Valliant?” Martin stooped and caught Swartz by the shoulders. “And I was near killing you two days ago!” “Hard blows have begun many a good friendship. My heart’s with you, Martin Valliant.” And so it was agreed between them, that they should try this desperate venture when darkness came. To Martin Valliant it seemed very long in the coming, though the shadow of the tower lengthened itself across the water till it touched the grassland beyond the mere. He watched the fish leaping in the water, and the swallows skimming the surface and calling shrilly to each other. As for the sunset, it seemed to set the earth afire and make everything burn with miraculous color, so that the grasslands were a great green carpet dusted with precious stones, and the beech trees all glowing with yellow light. In that little shelter of leaves Mellis lay white and still like a sweet saint sleeping in a tomb cut out of crystal, while Martin Valliant’s fierce restlessness longed for all this beauty to be blotted out. He could have pulled the sun down out of the sky, and thrown it into the mere for the quicker quenching of the day. Fulk de Lisle had had a seat made of sods and branches on the edge of the wood, and he sat there like a great lord while the men built two fires, one for themselves and one for their captains, and with the coming of the darkness these two fires were like great red eyes under the black brow of the beech wood. A pot was slung over the flames, and a table set for Fulk de Lisle and John Rich, and covered with a white cloth. The shelter of leaves lay a hundred paces or more away from the fires and beyond the edge of the light. It showed as a dark blur on the open grassland. Martin Valliant had been stripping off his harness, but Swartz was still on the watch. “They are guarding the causeway. Fulk de Lisle would not lose his supper for any woman. It is time we made a beginning.” Martin gathered up his armor, and they went down into the courtyard. Swartz was fumbling at the points of his hose. “Curse these knots! Give me your knife, man.” He cut himself out of his clothes, chuckling fiercely. Martin had laid his armor and his sword beside the postern leading into the garden; he had stripped himself of everything save his short cassock, for the thing would not spoil his swimming, and it hid the whiteness of his body. Old Swartz came out haired like an ape, his horn slung to his neck by a stout cord. “Here is your knife, man. We had best take to the water on the farther side, and paddle across softly.”