d too redoubtable a foe.
Methinks my arm has somewhat lost its strength or cunning, else should I
scarce have fallen so easy a prey. I ought to have striven harder to
have kept by Gaston's side; but I know not now how we came to be
separated. And Roger, too, who has ever been at my side in all times of
strife and danger, how came he to be sundered from me likewise? It must
have been done by the fellows who bore me off -- the followers of the
Black Visor. Strange, very strange! I know not what to think of it. But
when next my jailer comes he will doubtless tell me where I am and what
is desired of me."

The chances of war were so uncertain, and the captive of one day so
often became the victor of the next, that Raymond, who for all his
fragile look possessed a large fund of cool courage, did not feel
greatly disturbed by the ill-chance that had befallen him. Many French
knights were most chivalrous and courteous to their prisoners; some even
permitted them to go out on parole to collect their own ransoms,
trusting to their word of honour to return if they were unable to obtain
the stipulated sum. The English cause had many friends amongst the
French nobility, and friendships as well as enmities had resulted from
the English occupation of such large tracts of France.

So Raymond resolved to make the best of his incarceration whilst it
lasted, trusting that some happy accident would soon set him at large
again. With such a brother as Gaston on the outside of his prison wall,
it would be foolish to give way to despondency.

He looked curiously about at the cave-like place in which he found
himself. It appeared to be a natural chamber formed in the living rock.
It received a certain share of air and light from a long narrow loophole
high up overhead, and the place was tolerably fresh and dry, though its
proportions were by no means large. Still it was lofty, and it was wide
enough to admit of a certain but limited amount of exercise to its occupant.

Raymond found that he could make five paces along one side of it and
four along the other. Except the heap of straw, upon which he had been
laid, there was no plenishing of any kind to the cell. However, as it
was probably only a temporary resting place, this mattered the less.
Raymond had been worse lodged during some of his wanderings before now,
and for the two years that he had lived amongst the Cistercian Brothers,
he had scarcely been more luxuriously treated. His cell