? I can't bear your scorn. Take it off
me or I go kill myself."

"That's what you had best do. You'll find the devil a better master than
a foreign abbot. Farewell for ever."

"Nay, nay; what's your will? Soul or no soul, I'll work it."

"Will you? Will you indeed? If so, stay a moment," and she ran down the
chapel, bolting the doors; then returned to him, saying--

"Now come forth, Thomas, and since you are once more a man, kiss me as
you used to do twenty years ago and more. You'll not confess to that,
will you? There. Now, kneel before the altar here and swear an oath.
Nay, listen to it before you swear, for it is wide."

Emlyn said the oath to him. It was a great and terrible oath. Under it
he bound himself to be her slave and join himself with her in working
woe to the monks of Blossholme, and especially to their Abbot, Clement
Maldon, in payment of the wrongs that these had done to them both; in
payment for the murder of Sir John Foterell and of Christopher Harflete,
and of the imprisonment and robbery of Cicely Harflete, the daughter of
the one and the wife of the other. He bound himself to do those things
which she should tell him. He bound himself neither in the confessional
nor, should it come to that, on the bed of torture or the scaffold to
breathe a word of all their counsel. He prayed that if he did so his
soul might pay the price in everlasting torment, and of all these things
he took Heaven to be his witness.

"Now," said Emlyn, when she had finished setting out this fearful vow,
"will you be a man and swear and thereby avenge the dead and save the
innocent from death; or will you who have my secret be a crawling monk
and go back to Blossholme Abbey and betray me?"

He thought a moment, rubbing his red head, for the thing frightened him,
as well it might. The scales of the balance of his mind hung evenly, and
Emlyn knew not which way they would turn. She saw, and put out all her
woman's strength. Resting her hand upon his shoulder, she leaned forward
and whispered into his ear.

"Do you remember, Thomas, how first we told our young love that spring
day down in the copse by the water, and how sweet the daffodils bloomed
about our feet--the daffodils and the wood-lilies? Do you remember how
we swore ourselves each to each for all our lives, aye, and all the
lives that were to come, and how for us two the earth was turned to
heaven? And then--do you remember how that monk walked by--it was this
Cle