f John, who seldom stirred out in the bitter cold of winter. Then
he would ask and obtain her permission to accompany her as far as the
gate of her own home -- the place where she was staying; and though he
never advanced beyond the gate -- for she knew not what her relatives
might say to these encounters with a gallant without money and without
lands -- they were red-letter days in the calendar of two young lives,
and were strong factors moulding their future lives, little as either
knew it at the time.

Had either the radiant maiden or the knightly youth had eyes for any but
the other, they might have observed that these encounters, now of almost
daily occurrence, were not unheeded by at least one evil-faced watcher.
The servants who attended Mistress Joan were all devoted to her, and
kept their own counsel, whatever they might think, and Raymond's fame as
one of the heroes of Crecy had already gone far and wide, and won him
great regard in and about the walls of his uncle's home; but there was
another watcher of Mistress Joan's movements who took a vastly different
view of the little idyll playing itself out between the youth and the
maiden, and this watcher was none other than the evil and vengeful Peter
Sanghurst the younger.

Once as Raymond turned away, after watching Joan's graceful, stately
figure vanish up the avenue which led to her uncle's house, he suddenly
encountered the intensely malevolent glance of a pair of coal-black
eyes, and found himself most unexpectedly face to face with the same man
who had once confronted him in the forest and had demanded the
restitution of the boy Roger.

"You again!" hissed out between his teeth the dark-browed man. "You
again daring to stand in my path to thwart me! Have a care how you
provoke me too far. My day is coming! Think you that I threaten in vain?
Go on then in your blind folly and hardihood! But remember that I can
read the future. I can see the day when you, a miserable crushed worm,
will be wholly and solely in my power; when you will be mine mine to do
with what I will, none hindering or gainsaying me. Take heed then how
you provoke me to vengeance; for the vengeance of the Sanghurst can be
what thou dreamest not of now. Thwart me, defy me, and the hour will
come when for every pang of rage and jealousy I have known thou shalt
suffer things of which thou hast no conception now, and none shall be
able to rescue thee from my hand. Yon maiden is mine -- mine -