“It puzzles so!” said the herd-girl. “I am not very weak. Is it man’s part, too, to lay hands upon a woman against her will? If man did not that, then man need not do, at such cost, the other. What credit to put water on the house you yourself set afire?” “Now by Our Lady,” said Garin, “you are a strange herd-girl!” He twisted in the saddle so that he might look at her. She sat still,—young, slim and forlorn to the eye, dark as a berry, her feet bare and her dress so torn that her limbs showed. Her long, black loosened hair almost hid her face, which seemed thin, with irregular features. She had her distaff still, the forlorn serf’s daughter, herself a serf. “If we plume ourselves it is a mistake, and foolishness,” said Garin. “But yet though one man act villainously, another may act well.” “Just,” said the herd-girl. “And I thank the one who has acted well—but not all men. I thank a man, but not mankind.” “How old are you?” “I am eighteen.” “Where got you your thoughts?” “There is time and need for thinking,” said the herd-girl, “when you keep sheep.” With that she sighed and fell silent. They were going now by a swift stream; when, presently, they came to the ford and crossed, they were upon convent lands. Our Lady in Egypt was a Cistercian convent, ample and rich, and her grey-clad nuns came from noble houses. There were humbly born lay sisters. The abbess was the sister of a prince. The place had wealth, and being of the order of Saint Bernard, then in its first strength, was like a hive for work. From the ford on, the road was mended, the fields fat, the hedges trim. The convent had its serfs, and the huts of these people were not miserable, nor did the people themselves look hunger-stricken and woe-begone. The hillsides smiled with vineyards, the sky arched all with an Egyptian blue, the westering sun, tempering his fierceness, looked benignly on. Presently, in a vale beside the stream, they saw the great place, set four-square, a tiny hamlet clinging like an infant to its skirts. Behind, covering a pleasant slope, were olive groves with tall cypresses mounting like spires. Grey sisters worked among the grey trees. A bell rang slowly, with a silver tone. “I will take you to the gate,” said Garin. “Then you can knock and the sister will let you in.” “Aye, that will she. And you, fair squire, where will you go? Where is your home?” Now Garin was thinking, “If that knight is a powerful man it is well that I gave him no inkling of where to find me!” Assuredly he had no thought nor fear that the herd-girl might betray. And yet he did not say, “I was born at Castel-Noir,” or “I live now in the castle of Raimbaut the Six-fingered.” He said, “I dwell by the sea, a long way from here.” “Dusk is at hand,” said the herd-girl. “There, among those houses, is one set apart for benighted travellers.” “How do you know that? Have you been here before?”