Ah, but this was the mighty argument! Naught could the girl say to justify so heinous a crime as low birth. What a man did in those rough cruel days might be forgotten and forgiven but the sins of his mother or his grandfather in not being of noble blood, no matter howsoever wickedly attained, he might never overcome or live down. Torn by conflicting emotions, the poor girl dragged herself to her own apartment and there upon a restless, sleepless couch, beset by wild, impossible hopes, and vain, torturing regrets, she fought out the long, bitter night; until toward morning she solved the problem of her misery in the only way that seemed possible to her poor, tired, bleeding, little heart. When the rising sun shone through the narrow window, it found Joan de Tany at peace with all about her; the carved golden hilt of the toy that had hung at her girdle protruded from her breast, and a thin line of crimson ran across the snowy skin to a little pool upon the sheet beneath her. And so the cruel hand of a mighty revenge had reached out to crush another innocent victim. CHAPTER XV When word of the death of Joan de Tany reached Torn, no man could tell from outward appearance the depth of the suffering which the sad intelligence wrought on the master of Torn. All that they who followed him knew was that certain unusual orders were issued, and that that same night, the ten companies rode south toward Essex without other halt than for necessary food and water for man and beast. When the body of Joan de Tany rode forth from her father’s castle to the church at Colchester, and again as it was brought back to its final resting place in the castle’s crypt, a thousand strange and silent knights, black draped, upon horses trapped in black, rode slowly behind the bier. Silently they had come in the night preceding the funeral, and as silently, they slipped away northward into the falling shadows of the following night. No word had passed between those of the castle and the great troop of sable-clad warriors, but all within knew that the mighty Outlaw of Torn had come to pay homage to the memory of the daughter of De Tany, and all but the grieving mother wondered at the strangeness of the act. As the horde of Torn approached their Derby stronghold, their young leader turned the command over to Red Shandy and dismounted at the door of Father Claude’s cottage. “I am tired, Father,” said the outlaw as he threw himself upon his accustomed bench. “Naught but sorrow and death follow in my footsteps. I and all my acts be accurst, and upon those I love, the blight falleth.” “Alter thy ways, my son; follow my advice ere it be too late. Seek out a new and better life in another country and carve thy future into the semblance of glory and honor.” “Would that I might, my friend,” answered Norman of Torn. “But hast thou thought on the consequences which surely would follow should I thus remove both heart and head from the thing that I have built?