Matteo drummed with his fingers on his shield, and burst into the "Chanson of William of the Long Sword," elder brother of the Marquis Boniface, whose son was titular King of Jerusalem. The knights urged their horses closer, and when he came to the clamorous chorus they roared it after him, so that the Burgundian peasants by the wayside dropped their tools of husbandry and fled in panic fear: Bloody-red from helm to heel, William Long Sword swung his steel! Round him many a Paynim lance Sought to ward him, to advance. But he slew them all. 'Gainst his arm could naught avail-- Scimiter or Damascus mail-- Crushed to earth they fall! Matteo was always in demand amongst the knights of the several companies, and Hugh found himself thrown into increasing intimacy with the Cæsar Michael and his daughter--or rather, with the Lady Helena. How it began Hugh could not say. But early in the march it was settled that he was to ride with her for certain periods each day. At first it seemed that he met her as they were starting forth in the morning or after the midday rest or perhaps in the midst of a stroll about a village, in which the camp was pitched for the night. Accident was the cause of these early encounters, and loneliness and curiosity stimulated others. She repelled him, whilst she attracted him. There was something of Oriental mystery, as well as languor, in her character. He was conscious that the face she opposed to him was a mask behind which another personality--he suspected a more fiery, intense, tigerish self, capable of immense selfishness and gusty passions--lurked in enforced concealment. Once he surprised this self, when he looked up to see her eyes blazing under their heavy lids as if they would read the inmost secrets of his heart. But it fled instantly to cover. "You are so strange-, Messer Hugh," she smiled. "I was wondering if you were really so good and generous?" There was an under-current of mockery in her words that put Hugh upon the defensive. "You would make fun of me," he reproached her. "No," she asserted. "I was thinking of how you listened to the outlaw who argued the wrongs of his kind. It was as if you credited him." "I did," said Hugh simply. "There is much evil in the world--as Messer Fulke says--and most of it falls upon the peasants." "But what else are they made for? It is their portion to serve, even as it is the portion of the horse or the dog or the oxen." "They have souls," answered Hugh, puzzled. "They are people like us, are they not?" "Oh, have your western monks decided so?" she said carelessly. "'Twas a point I thought otherwise upon." So she tricked him out of the question he would have asked, at the same time involuntarily exposing a view of her own soul, the driving power of that hidden personality.