emple--there--and alone!'

'Nay, Lady, methought as _Monsieur votre mari_ knew the true light, you
would fear no vain terror nor power of darkness.'

Should these peasants--these villeins--be bold, and see the descendant
of the 'bravest of knights,' the daughter of the house of Ribaumont,
afraid? She rallied herself, and replied manfully, 'I FEAR not, no!' but
then, womanfully, 'But it is the Temple! It is haunted! Tell me what I
must expect.'

'I tell you truly, Madame,' said Rotrou; 'none whom I have sheltered
here have seen aught. On the faith of a Christian, no evil spirit--no
ghost--has ever alarmed them; but they were fortified by prayer and
psalm.'

'I do pray! I have a psalm-book,' said Eustacie, and she added to
herself, 'No, they shall never see that I fear. After all, REVENANTS can
do nothing worse than scare one; they cannot touch one; the saints and
angels will not let them--and my uncle would do much worse.'

But to climb those winding stairs, and resign herself to be left alone
with the Templars for the night, was by far the severest trial that had
yet befallen the poor young fugitive. As her tire feet dragged up the
crumbling steps, her memory reverted to the many tales of the sounds
heard by night within those walls--church chants turning into diabolical
songs, and bewildered travelers into thickets and morasses, where they
had been found in the morning, shuddering as they told of a huge white
monk, with clanking weapons, and a burning cross of fire printed on his
shoulder and breast, who stood on the walls and hurled a shrieking babe
into the abyss. Were such spectacles awaiting her? Must she bear them?
And could her endurance hold out? Our Lady be her aid, and spare her in
her need!

At the top of the stairs she found Rotrou's hand, ready to help her
out on a stone floor, quite dark, but thickly covered, as she felt and
smelt, with trusses of hay, between which a glimmering light showed a
narrow passage. A few steps, guided by Rotrou's hand, brought her out
into light again, and she found herself in a large chamber, with the
stone floor broken away in some places, and with a circular window,
thickly veiled with ivy, but still admitting a good deal of evening
light.

It was in fact a chamber over the vaulted refectory of the knights. The
walls and vaults still standing in their massive solidity, must have
tempted some peasant, or mayhap some adventurer, rudely to cover in the
roof (which had o