e parchment before him
to the girl's face.

"He is our enemy," said the tutor of the King, Alexander Livingston,
more generously, "but I will never deny that he is a gallant youth;
also of his person proper to look upon."

And very complacently he smoothed down the lace ruffles which fell
from the neck of his silken doublet midway down its front.

"The young man is a Douglas," said James the Gross, curtly; "if he
were of coward breed, we had not needed to come hither secretly!"

"It needeth not four butchers to kill a sheep!" said de Retz.
"Concerning that, we agree. Proceed, my Lady Sybilla."

The girl was now breathing more quickly, her bosom rising and falling
visibly beneath her light silken gown.

"Yet because of those that have been of the house of Douglas before
him, shall I have no pity upon William, sixth Earl thereof! And
because of two dead Dukes of Touraine, will I deliver to you the third
Duke, into whose mouth hath hardly yet come the proper gust of living.
This is the tale I have heard a thousand times. There was in France,
it skills not where, a vale quiet as a summer Sabbath day. The vines
hung ripe-clustered in wide and pleasant vineyards. The olives rustled
grey on the slopes. The bell swung in the monastery tower. The cottage
in the dell was safe as the chateau on the hill. Then came the foreign
leader of a foreign army, and lo! in a day, there were a hundred dead
men in the valley, all honourable men slain in defence of their own
doors. The smoky flicker of flames broke through the roof in the
daylight. There was heard the crying of many women. And the man who
wrought this was an Earl of Douglas."

The girl paused, and in a low whisper, intense as the breathing of the
sea, she said:

_"And for this will I deliver into your hands his grandson, William of
Douglas!"_

Then her voice came again to the ears of the four listeners, in a note
low and monotonous like the wind that goes about the house on autumn
evenings.

"There was also one who, being but a child, had escaped from that
tumult and had found shelter in a white convent with the sisters
thereof, who taught her to pray, and be happy in the peace of the hour
that is exactly like the one before it. The shadow of the dial finger
upon the stone was not more peaceful than the holy round of her life.

"Then came one who met her by the convent wall, met her under the
shade of the orchard trees, met her under cloud of night, till his
soul