will lodge with him
this night."

Alleyne set spurs to his horse and reached the inn door a long bow-shot
before his companions. Neither varlet nor ostler could be seen, so he
pushed open the door and called loudly for the landlord. Three times he
shouted, but, receiving no reply, he opened an inner door and advanced
into the chief guest-room of the hostel.

A very cheerful wood-fire was sputtering and cracking in an open grate
at the further end of the apartment. At one side of this fire, in a
high-backed oak chair, sat a lady, her face turned towards the door.
The firelight played over her features, and Alleyne thought that he had
never seen such queenly power, such dignity and strength, upon a woman's
face. She might have been five-and-thirty years of age, with aquiline
nose, firm yet sensitive mouth, dark curving brows, and deep-set eyes
which shone and sparkled with a shifting brilliancy. Beautiful as she
was, it was not her beauty which impressed itself upon the beholder;
it was her strength, her power, the sense of wisdom which hung over
the broad white brow, the decision which lay in the square jaw and
delicately moulded chin. A chaplet of pearls sparkled amid her black
hair, with a gauze of silver network flowing back from it over her
shoulders; a black mantle was swathed round her, and she leaned back in
her chair as one who is fresh from a journey.

In the opposite corner there sat a very burly and broad-shouldered man,
clad in a black jerkin trimmed with sable, with a black velvet cap with
curling white feather cocked upon the side of his head. A flask of red
wine stood at his elbow, and he seemed to be very much at his ease, for
his feet were stuck up on a stool, and between his thighs he held a dish
full of nuts. These he cracked between his strong white teeth and chewed
in a leisurely way, casting the shells into the blaze. As Alleyne gazed
in at him he turned his face half round and cocked an eye at him over
his shoulder. It seemed to the young Englishman that he had never seen
so hideous a face, for the eyes were of the lightest green, the nose was
broken and driven inwards, while the whole countenance was seared and
puckered with wounds. The voice, too, when he spoke, was as deep and as
fierce as the growl of a beast of prey.

"Young man," said he, "I know not who you may be, and I am not much
inclined to bestir myself, but if it were not that I am bent upon taking
my ease, I swear, by the sword of