y
follow, and their swords--those swords you feared to look
on--shall yet pierce your heart and give up your soul to your
master Satan," and she paused, trembling with her righteous
wrath, while Hassan stared at her and muttered:

"By Allah, a princess indeed! So have I seen Salah-ed-din look in
his rage. Yes, and she has his very eyes."

But Sir Hugh answered in a thick voice.

"Let them follow--one or both. I fear them not and out there my
foot will not slip in the snow."

"Then I say that it shall slip in the sand or on a rock," she
answered, and turning, fled to the cabin and cast herself down
and wept till she thought that her heart would break.

Well might Rosamund weep whose beloved sire was slain, who was
torn from her home to find herself in the power of a man she
hated. Yet there was hope for her. Hassan, Eastern trickster as
he might be, was her friend; and her uncle, Saladin, at least,
would never wish that she should be shamed. Most like he knew
nothing of this man Lozelle, except as one of those Christian
traitors who were ever ready to betray the Cross for gold. But
Saladin was far away and her home lay behind her, and her cousins
and lovers were eating out their hearts upon that fading shore.
And she--one woman alone--was on this ship with the evil man
Lozelle, who thus had kept his promise, and there were none save
Easterns to protect her, none save them--and God, Who had
permitted that such things should be.

The ship swayed, she grew sick and faint. Hassan brought her
food with his own hands, but she loathed it who only desired to
die. The day turned to night, the night turned to day again, and
always Hassan brought her food and strove to comfort her, till at
length she remembered no more.

Then came a long, long sleep, and in the sleep dreams of her
father standing with his face to the foe and sweeping them down
with his long sword as a sickle sweeps corn--of her father felled
by the pilgrim knave, dying upon the floor of his own house, and
saying "God will guard you. His will be done." Dreams of Godwin
and Wulf also fighting to save her, plighting their troths and
swearing their oaths, and between the dreams blackness.

Rosamund awoke to feel the sun streaming warmly through the
shutter of her cabin, and to see a woman who held a cup in her
hand, watching her--a stout woman of middle age with a not
unkindly face. She looked about her and remembered all. So she
was still in the ship.