at she
comes as a friend. I will stake my life on it."

"Or if she comes as an enemy we are no worse off," grumbled sceptical
Malise. "We can at least encourage the woman and then hold her as an
hostage."

The three Scots were standing to receive their guest when the Lady
Sybilla rode up. Her face had lost none of the pale sadness which
marked it when Sholto last saw her, and though the look of utter agony
had passed away, the despair of a soul in pain had only become more
deeply printed upon it.

The girl having acknowledged their salutations with a stately and
well-accustomed motion of the head, reached a hand for Sholto to lift
her from her palfrey.

Then, still without spoken word, she silently seated herself on the
grey-lichened rock rudely shaped into the semblance of a chair, on
which Malise had been sitting at his mending. The strange maiden
looked long at the blue sea deepening in the notches of the sand dunes
beneath them. The three men stood before her waiting for her to speak.
Each of them knew that lives, dearer and more precious than their own,
hung upon what she might have to say.

At last she spoke, in a voice low as the wind when it blows its
lightest among the trees:

"You have small cause to trust me or to count me your friend," she
said; "but we have that which binds closer than friendship--a common
enemy and a common cause of hatred. It were better, therefore, that we
should understand one another. I have never lost sight of you since
you came to this fatal land of Retz. I have been near you when you
knew it not. To accomplish this I have deceived the man who is my
taskmaster, swearing to him that in the witch crystal I have seen you
depart. And I shall yet deceive him in more deadly fashion."

Sholto could restrain himself no longer.

"Enough," he said roughly; "tell us whether the maidens are alive, and
if they are abiding in this Castle of Machecoul."

The Lady Sybilla did not remove her eyes from the red west.

"Thus far they are safe," she said, in the same calm monotone. "This
very hour I have come from the White Tower, in which they are
confined. But he whom I serve swears by an oath that if you or other
rescuers are heard of again in this country, he will destroy them
both."

She shuddered as she spoke with a strong revulsion of feeling.

"Therefore, be careful with a great carefulness. Give up all thought
of rescuing them directly. Remember what you have been able to
accomp