Fulk kept his mouth shut and his eyes on Merlin’s. His nostrils quivered. There was no slackening of his pride. Merlin sneered at him. “Put the sack over my lord’s head, and lay him down like a baby to sleep on the bracken. Fulk Ferrers, I wish you good dreams, and cool blood in the morning.” It was Isoult, mistrustful of Father Merlin’s subtlety, who came through the beech wood just when the grey light of the dawn was making the world look huge and vague and very mysterious. She found the men sleeping about the fire, and Guy the Stallion, who should have been on the watch, sitting doubled up with his head on his arms. Isoult glided past them and came to the doorway of the cell. It was so dark within that she could see nothing, though she could hear the sound of a man’s breathing. She stood there and called softly, putting her hands about her mouth. “Fulk! Fulk of the Forest!” He was sleeping lightly, and woke with a start to the presence of an old flour sack over his head and shoulders, and the leather thongs about wrists and ankles. It was very dark in the cell, and his waking mood was as coldly grim and implacable as his proud disgust could make it. He had fallen asleep with the prospect of having his throat cut in the morning, and it was no affair of his if some fool woke him so early. “Good comrade, are you still dreaming?” She had stolen in, but could see little but a vague shape lying on the bracken. Fulk bristled at the sound of her voice. “Isoult?” “Surely! Speak low. The birds are just beginning, and our friend Guy is asleep.” One piping note had thrilled up from the beeches, and of a sudden a score of other bird voices followed it, making the grey light quiver. “Is the sun up?” “Surely a man can see with his own eyes!” “With a sack tied over his head! Here is something for a woman to laugh at.” She came nearer. “What! Have they tied you up? I had a feeling that you and Merlin had come to the dagger point. Has he spoken?” “Spoken? It would have been his last sermon if those fellows yonder had given me three more minutes.” She knelt down beside him and he felt her fingers moving over his face. “Lie very still.” Isoult took the knife from her girdle, thrust the point through the sacking, slit it crosswise, and turned back the flaps. A haze of grey light was streaming into the cell, but it was not strong enough to show her the set and rigid hostility of his face. “So Merlin has spoken. Now, good comrade, do you see the light?” His lips moved stiffly, ironically. “I see many things—treachery, and lies, and dishonour, and the hands of a woman.” Isoult sat back on her heels, and thrust her knife back into its sheath. “Ah, so you look askance at me, and my hands are full of treachery!” He did not look at her, but at the vault of rock above him. “What God knows the devil discovers. This madman Merlin spoke of shriving me at dawn. He shall find me stiff in the neck.”