She ran up a couple of steps, caught him by the shoulders, stooped, and kissed him on the lips, before he was aware what she was about to do. "Say that again! A woman is weak! A woman cannot ravage and burn, and madden and wound--not with a sword and a firebrand, but----" She stooped. The boy was bewildered--his pulses leaping, his eye on fire, his head reeling. She kissed him again. "These are her weapons!" said Noémi. "Who is the fool now?" CHAPTER III. THE WOLVES OUT. JEAN DEL' PEYRA was riding home, a distance of some fifteen miles from La Roque Gageac. His way led through forests of oak clothing the slopes and plateau of chalk. The road was bad--to be more exact, there was no road; there was but a track. In times of civil broil, when the roads were beset by brigands, travellers formed or found ways for themselves through the bush, over the waste land, away from the old and neglected arteries of traffic. The highways were no longer kept up--there was no one to maintain them in repair, and if they were sound no one would travel on them who could avoid them by a détour, when exposed to be waylaid, plundered, carried off to a dungeon, and put to ransom. To understand the condition of affairs, a brief sketch of the English domination in Guyenne is necessary. By the marriage of Eleanor, daughter and heiress of William X., Earl of Poitou and Duke of Aquitaine, with Henry of Anjou, afterwards Henry II. of England, in 1152, the vast possessions of her family were united to those of the Angevin house, which claimed the English crown.