board. A well-heaped platter flanked
by a foaming tankard stands before him. At his right sits the Lady Mary,
her dark, plain, queenly face marked deep with those years of weary
waiting, but bearing the gentle grace and dignity which only sorrow and
restraint can give. On his left is Matthew, the old priest. Long ago
the golden-haired beauty had passed from Cosford to Fernhurst, where
the young and beautiful Lady Edith Brocas is the belle of all Sussex, a
sunbeam of smiles and merriment, save perhaps when her thoughts for an
instant fly back to that dread night when she was plucked from under the
very talons of the foul hawk of Shalford.

The old knight looked up as a fresh gust of wind with a dash of rain
beat against the window behind him. "By Saint Hubert, it is a wild
night!" said he. "I had hoped to-morrow to have a flight at a heron of
the pool or a mallard in the brook. How fares it with little Katherine
the peregrine, Mary?"

"I have joined the wing, father, and I have imped the feathers; but I
fear it will be Christmas ere she can fly again."

"This is a hard saying," said Sir John; "for indeed I have seen no
bolder better bird. Her wing was broken by a heron's beak last Sabbath
sennight, holy father, and Mary has the mending of it."

"I trust, my son, that you had heard mass ere you turned to worldly
pleasure upon God's holy day," Father Matthew answered.

"Tut, tut!" said the old knight, laughing. "Shall I make confession at
the head of my own table? I can worship the good God amongst his own
works, the woods and the fields, better than in yon pile of stone and
wood. But I call to mind a charm for a wounded hawk which was taught me
by the fowler of Gaston de Foix. How did it run? 'The lion of the Tribe
of Judah, the root of David, has conquered.' Yes, those were the words
to be said three times as you walk round the perch where the bird is
mewed."

The old priest shook his head. "Nay, these charms are tricks of the
Devil," said he. "Holy Church lends them no countenance, for they are
neither good nor fair. But how is it now with your tapestry, Lady Mary?
When last I was beneath this roof you had half done in five fair colors
the story of Theseus and Ariadne."

"It is half done still, holy father."

"How is this, my daughter? Have you then so many calls?"

"Nay, holy father, her thoughts are otherwhere," Sir John answered.
"She will sit an hour at a time, the needle in her hand and her soul a
hundre