yes, the price. Tennant, Constans, you heard what he
said. But where is my child? Let the girl stand forth; she is her
father's daughter, and she shall answer for herself."

"I will abide by it," said Quinton Edge, with cool confidence.

The half-circle opened and Issa stood before them; a mere child she
looked in her simple slip of white and with her fair hair all unbound. A
vague terror seized upon Sir Gavan. What was this question that he was
about to ask of his daughter? Could there be other than the one answer?
How quietly she stood there and waited. Yes, and they were all waiting
upon him; he must speak.

"Issa!"

It seemed to him that he had shouted aloud; then he realized that he had
not spoken at all. "Issa!" he said, again, and she turned towards him.

"This man; he is not known to you. How could it be?"

"Yet it is the truth, my father," answered the girl, steadily. "It is
just a month ago that chance set us face to face--one day when I rode
alone in the green drive."

"And thereafter?"

"Once he came to the walled garden, adventuring the thousand chances of
discovery. Yet how he managed to cross the stockade-line I know not,
for I was frightened, and begged him to leave me. And this he did most
courteously, only swearing that he would again return."

"The third time?"

"That was the day--the day of the first May-bloom--the Ochre brook and
the Doomsmen----" The girl's voice faltered.

"Yet never a word to me or to your mother?"

"It was not my secret," she answered, bravely; and upon that Quinton
Edge himself took up the word.

"The blame is mine, since I used the peril in which I stood to set a
seal upon her lips. A true and loyal maid is your daughter, and it was
only after she had twice said me nay that I resolved to take without the
asking. So I came that day which we both remember, and waited under the
alder bushes, and once again I missed my cast. Yet was the quest not
altogether fruitless, for I carried away this token from my lady's
hostile garden."

He drew a faded spray of the May-bloom from his doublet and touched it
lightly to his lips.

"What gentleman could refuse to redeem so dear a pledge? You have seen
how I took head in hand and sat me down under your own roof-tree, my
good Gavan of the keep. Faith, it was an even chance on which side the
platter would fall, but this time the luck was mine. We should have been
leagues away in the sun's eye by now, only that a peevish boy w