ning brows a lock of silky hair that gleamed snow-white among
the yellow.

"The torture!" growled Roger, and so, soft as they came, the three
turned and left him to his slumber. But oft he moaned and once he spake
a word, sudden and fierce 'twixt clenched teeth.

And the word was:

"Helen!"

CHAPTER XXVIII

OF THE PLACE OF REFUGE WITHIN THE GREEN

It was toward evening that Beltane awoke, and sitting up, looked about
him. He was in a chamber roughly square, a hollow within the rock part
natural and part hewn by hand, a commodious chamber lighted by a jagged
hole in the rock above, a fissure all o'er-grown with vines and
creeping plants whose luxuriant foliage tempered the sun's rays to a
tender green twilight very grateful and pleasant.

Now pendant from the opening was a ladder of cords, and upon this
ladder, just beneath the cleft, Beltane beheld a pair of lusty,
well-shaped legs in boots of untanned leather laced up with leathern
thongs; as for their owner, he was hidden quite by reason of the leafy
screen as he leaned forth of the fissure. Looking upon these legs,
Beltane knew them by their very attitude for the legs of one who watched
intently, but while he looked, they stirred, shifted, and growing lax,
became the legs of one who lounged; then, slow and lazily, they began
to descend lower and lower until the brown, comely face of Giles
Brabblecombe o' the Hills smiled down upon Beltane with a gleam of
white teeth. Cried he:

"Hail, noble brother, and likewise the good God bless thee! Hast slept
well, it lacketh scarce an hour to sundown, and therefore should'st
eat well. How say ye now to a toothsome haunch o' cold venison, in
faith, cunningly cooked and sufficiently salted and seasoned--ha? And
mark me! with a mouthful of malmsey, ripely rare? Oho, rich wine that I
filched from a fatuous friar jig-jogging within the green! Forsooth,
tall brother, 'tis a wondrous place, the greenwood, wherein a man shall
come by all he doth need--an he seek far enough! Thus, an my purse be
empty, your beefy burgher shall, by dint of gentle coaxing, haste to
fill me it with good, broad pieces. But, an my emptiness be of the
belly, then sweet Saint Giles send me some ambulating abbot or
pensive-pacing prior; for your churchmen do ever ride with saddle-bags
well lined, as I do know, having been bred a monk, and therefore with
a rare lust to creature comforts."

Now while he spake thus, the archer was busily setting