emained but Machecoul, more remote and also darker in
repute than any of the other dwelling-places of Gilles de Retz. As
they rode westward towards it, they became day by day more conscious
of the darkening down of the atmosphere of fear and suspicion, which,
murky and lowering, overhung all that fair land of southern Brittany.

The vast pine forests from which rose the lonely towers of this the
marshal's most remote castle could now be seen, serrated darkly
against the broad belt of the sky. The sombre blackness of their
spreading branches, the yet blacker darkness where the gaps between
their red trunks showed a way into the wood, increased the gloom of
the weary travellers. Yet they rode on, Sholto eagerly, Malise grimly,
and the Lord James with the dogged resignation of a good knight who
may be depended on to see an adventure through, however irksome it may
be proving.

James of Avondale thought within himself that the others had greater
interests in the quest than he--the younger MacKim having at stake the
honour of his sweetheart Maud, the elder the life of his young
mistress, the last of the Galloway house of Douglas.

Yet it was with that jolly heart of his beating strong and loyal under
his brown palmer's coat, that James Douglas rode towards Machecoul,
only whistling low to himself and wishing that something would happen
to break the monotony of their journey.

Nor had he long to wait. For just as the sun was setting they rode all
three of them abreast into the little hamlet of Saint Philbert, and
saw the sullen waters of the Etang de Grande Lieu spread marshy and
brackish as far as the eye could reach, edged by peat bogs and
overhung perilously by gloomy pines nodding over pools blacker than
scrivener's ink.

As the three Scots looked into the stockaded entrance of the village,
they could see the children playing on the long, irregular street, and
the elder folk sitting about their doors in the evening light.

But as soon as the clatter of horses' hoofs was heard, borne from far
down the aisles of the forest, there arose a sudden clamour and a
crying. From each little sparred enclosure rushed forth a woman who
snatched a baby here and there and drove a herd of children before her
indoors, glancing around and behind her as she did so with the anxious
look of a motherly barn-door fowl when the hawk hangs poised in the
windless sky.

By the time the three men had entered the gate and ridden up the
villa