u, the marshal's most cruel and remorseless
confidant. Here, as the marshal had very truly informed the Lady
Sybilla, they had been under the care of--or, rather, fellow-prisoners
with--the neglected wife of Gilles de Retz, and at Pouzauges they had
spent some days of comparative peace and security in the society of
her daughter.

But at the first breath of the coming of the three strangers to the
district they had been seized and securely conveyed to Machecoul
itself--there to be interned behind the vast walls and triple bastions
of that fortress prison.

"I wonder, Maudie," said Margaret Douglas, as they sat on the flat
roof of the White Tower of Machecoul and looked over the battlements
upon the green pine glades and wide seaward Landes, "I wonder whether
we shall ever again see the water of Dee and our mother--and Sholto
MacKim."

It is to be feared that the last part of the problem exceeded in
interest all others in the eyes of Maud Lindesay.

"It seems as if we never could again behold any one we loved or wished
to see--here in this horrible place," sighed Maud Lindesay. "If ever I
get back to the dear land and see Solway side, I will be a different
girl."

"But, Maud," said the little maid, reproachfully, "you were always
good and kind. It is not well done of you to speak against yourself in
that fashion."

Maud Lindesay shook her pretty head mournfully.

"Ah, Margaret, you will know some day," she said. "I have been
wicked,--not in things one has to confess to Father Gawain,
but,--well, in making people like me, and give me things, and come to
see me, and then afterwards flouting them for it and sending them
away."

It was not a lucid description, but it sufficed.

"Ah, but," said Margaret Douglas, "I think not these things to be
wicked. I hope that some day I shall do just the same, though, of
course, I shall not be as beautiful as you, Maudie; no, never! I asked
Sholto MacKim if I would, and he said, 'Of course not!' in a deep
voice. It was not pretty of him, was it, Maud?"

"I think it was very prettily said of him," answered Maud Lindesay,
with the first flicker of a smile on her face. Her conscience was
quite at ease about Sholto. He was different. Whatever pain she had
caused him, she meant to make up to him with usury thereto. The others
she had exercised no more for her own amusement than for their own
souls' good.

"My brother William must indeed be very angry with us, that he hath
neve