mother of a bastard. Oh, it will be enough punishment. Go,
you hot snake; leave me.'

Jehane rose to her feet, bowed her head and went out. Next moment the
Queen must have whipped out of bed, for she caught her before she could
shut the door, and clung to her neck, sobbing desperately. 'O God,
Jehane, save Richard! Have mercy on me, I am most wretched.' Now the
other seemed to be queen.

'My girl,' said Jehane, 'I will do what I promised.' She kissed the
scorching forehead, and went away with Milo to find Giafar ibn Mulk.

To get at him it was necessary to put the girl Fanoum to the question.
This was done. Giafar ibn Mulk, enticed into the house, proved to be a
young man of prudence and resource. He could not, he said, conduct them
to his master, because he had been told to conduct the Marquess; but an
equally sure guide could be found, and there were no objections to his
delaying his own illustrious convoy for a week or more. Further than
that he could not go, nor did the near prospect of death, which the
abbot exhibited to him, prove any inducement to the alteration of his
mind. 'Death?' he said, when the implements of that were before him. 'If
I am to die, I am to die: not twice it happens to a man. But I recommend
to these priests the expediency of first finding El Safy.' As this was
to be their guide up Lebanon, those priests agreed. El Safy also agreed,
when they had him. A galley was got ready for sea; the provisional Grand
Master of the Temple wrote a commendatory letter to his 'beloved friend
in the one God, Sinan, Lord of the Assassins, _Vetus de Monte_'; and
then, in two days' time, Milo the abbot, Jehane with her little Fulke, a
few women, and El Safy (their master in the affair), left Acre for
Tortosa, whence they must climb on mule-back to Lebanon.

CHAPTER VII

THE CHAPTER OF THE SACRIFICE ON LEBANON; ALSO CALLED CASSANDRA

From the haven at Acre to the bill of Tortosa is two days' sailing with
a fair wind. Thence, climbing the mountains, you reach Musse in four
days more, if the passes are open. If they are shut you do not reach it
at all. High on Lebanon, above the frozen gorge where Orontes and
Leontes, rivers of Syria, separate in their courses; above the terrace
of cedars, above Shurky the clouded mountain, lies a deep green valley
sentinelled on all sides by snow peaks and by the fortresses upon their
tops. In the midst of that, among cedars and lines of cypress trees, is
the white p