It seemed that overnight the Duchess of Thebes had asked Ximenes to lend her men of the Catalan Grand Company for a certain purpose, and when he had refused her she bade Bohemond find for her the men she needed. What the duchess's purpose was Bohemond did not know, further than that he believed she wished to make sure of some enemy of hers that she held to be lurking in the secrecy of the Eleusinian wood. Chance had made Bohemond acquainted with a kind of freebooter whom, from the lad's description, Simon had little difficulty in recognizing as his one-time waylayer Captain Fox. This footpad promised to pick up a fellowship, and he kept his word. Early in the present morning Esclaramonde, with Bohemond for companion, slipped away from Athens, joined a band of six spadassins outside the walls, and rode for the forest, the duchess ahead in a rigid spirit of silence. At first all went well enough, though it showed strange to Bohemond to see his duchess travelling in the company of half a dozen ruffians. But it seemed that when the party had got within the confines of the wood the bearing of the men suddenly changed towards the lady that led them. The fellow that no doubt was Captain Fox had fallen somewhat behind as they rode with one of his pillagers. The pair kept whispering apart, and between them it is probable that they changed their plans from one crime to another crime. The first that Bohemond knew of their intent was when he suddenly found himself stricken from his horse by a brace of the knaves, while the rest of the malefactors set upon the duchess and snatched her from her saddle though she raged at them like a fury. Two of the miscreants dragged the screaming, struggling woman--whose clamor was now the more horrid in contrast with her former silence--into the wood, while Captain Fox gave the horses in charge of another, and bade the two that had hold of Bohemond to treat him in the fashion in which Simon had found him. "For," quoth the rogue, "I would not have the lad's blood on my hands, since he helped us to this booty, but if it pleases Heaven to hang him by spurring his horse to stir, why then let him swing for me." So Bohemond had remained there, for how long he knew not, standing on his steed that by the bounty of Providence was content to keep still until Simon came through the trees to save his rider.