for we know not what may be
within."

Again he turned to the door, and again the two men barred his passage.

"Stand back, I say, back for your lives!" said Nigel. "By Saint Paul! I
should think it shame to soil my sword with such as you, but my soul is
set, and no man shall bar my path this night."

The men shrank from the deadly menace of that gentle voice.

"Hold!" said one of them, peering through the darkness, "is it not
Squire Loring of Tilford?"

"That is indeed my name."

"Had you spoken it I for one would not have stopped your way. Put down
your staff, Wat, for this is no stranger, but the Squire of Tilford."

"As well for him," grumbled the other, lowering his cudgel with an
inward prayer of thanksgiving. "Had it been otherwise I should have had
blood upon my soul to-night. But our master said nothing of neighbors
when he ordered us to hold the door. I will enter and ask him what is
his will."

But already Nigel was past them and had pushed open the outer door.
Swift as he was, the Lady Mary was at his very heels, and the two passed
together into the hall beyond.

It was a great room, draped and curtained with black shadows, with one
vivid circle of light in the center, where two oil lamps shone upon a
small table. A meal was laid upon the table, but only two were seated at
it, and there were no servants in the room. At the near end was Edith,
her golden hair loose and streaming down over the scarlet and black of
her riding-dress.

At the farther end the light beat strongly upon the harsh face and the
high-drawn misshapen shoulders of the lord of the house. A tangle
of black hair surmounted a high rounded forehead, the forehead of a
thinker, with two deep-set cold gray eyes twinkling sharply from under
tufted brows. His nose was curved and sharp, like the beak of some cruel
bird, but below the whole of his clean-shaven powerful face was marred
by the loose slabbing mouth and the round folds of the heavy chin.
His knife in one hand and a half-gnawed bone in the other, he looked
fiercely up, like some beast disturbed in his den, as the two intruders
broke in upon his hall.

Nigel stopped midway between the door and the table. His eyes and those
of Paul de la Fosse were riveted upon each other. But Mary, with her
woman's soul flooded over with love and pity, had rushed forward and
cast her arms round her younger sister. Edith had sprung up from her
chair, and with averted face tried to push the oth