"Hush! or your mother will overhear. Come this way." And Sir Gavan preceded his son into the guard-room on the left of the vaulted entrance, walking heavily, as one who bears an unaccustomed burden upon his shoulders. Yet when he spoke again his voice had its accustomed steadiness. "No one has seen her since ten of the sundial. It is now noon, and the alarm-bell has been ringing this half-hour." Constans felt something tighten at his own throat. "You have searched the enclosure?" he faltered. "Every nook and corner," returned Sir Gavan. "Tennant, with a dozen men, is now beating the upper plantations." Constans thought guiltily of that cleverly concealed gap in the palisades just beyond the intake of the Ochre brook. He and Issa had shared it between them as a precious secret, and he had used it this very morning as a short cut to the water-side. Tennant, their elder brother, was not aware of its existence, but then Tennant was a prig, and not to be trusted in truly momentous affairs. There was his father's wrath. Constans turned sick at the thought of arousing it. No; he could not tell him. "I don't know," he said, vaguely. Sir Gavan looked at him searchingly, then turned and strode out of the room. Constans felt his cheeks grow hot. Why had he not told all the truth? He was a coward, a liar, in all but the actual word. He sat down on a bench and buried his face in his hands; then the recurring thought of Issa and of her peril stung him to his feet. Where had Sir Gavan gone? Constans made his way, hesitatingly, into the court-yard of the keep. He found it thronged with men, his father's retainers and servants. The archers were busy putting new strings to their bows; the spearmen were testing, with grave eagerness, the stout ash of their weapons, or perchance whetting an edge on the broad blades. Half a dozen of the younger men were engaged in covering the roof of the main and out buildings with horse-hides soaked in water, as a protection against burning arrows; others were driving the protesting cattle into the byres and sacking up a quantity of newly threshed grain that lay upon the flailing floor; everywhere the noise of shouting men and of hurrying feet. Sir Gavan was not to be seen, and Constans, after inquiring for him through a fruitless quarter of an hour, entered the main house and sought the fighting platform on its roof. Why had no lookout been stationed here? Surely an oversight. He gazed eagerly about him.