urs and seen a patch of moonlight from a high
southern window on the outer wall of the palace passing across
Owen's breast as he slept. Then I was on the floor across the door,
but now I slept in the same place that Owen had that night, while
he was on the couch across the room and under the window. It was
possible, therefore, that the light did fall on my face, but I was
pretty sure that if so it would have waked me.

At all events, if the letter had aught to do with that, it was a
cumbrous way of letting me know that my bed was in a bad place for
quiet sleep. The only thing that seemed likely thus was that the
good priest who wrote had left the palace before he had remembered
to tell me how he had fared in that room once, and so sent back
word. There were many priests backward and forward here, as at
Glastonbury with Ina. Then it seemed plain that this was the
meaning of the whole thing, and so I would hang a cloak over the
window by and by.

And, of course, having settled the question in my own mind, I
forgot to do that, and was like to have paid dearly for forgetting.

Two nights afterward, when the moon was at the full, I woke from
sleep suddenly with the surety that I heard my name called softly.
I was wide awake in a moment, and found the room bright with
moonlight that did indeed lie in a broad square right across my
chest on the furs that covered me. I glanced across to Owen, but he
was asleep, as there was full light enough to see, and then I
wondered why I seemed to have heard that call. In a few moments I
knew that, and also that the voice I heard was the one that had
come to me in sore danger before.

Idly and almost sleeping again I watched the light, to see if
indeed it was going to cross my face, and then a sudden shadow
flitted across it, and with a hiss and flick of feathers a long
arrow fled through the window and stuck in the plaster of the wall
not an inch above my chest, furrowing the fur of the white bearskin
over me, so close was it.

In a moment I was on the floor, with a call to Owen, and it was
well that I had the sense to swing myself clear from the light and
leap from the head of the bed, for even as my feet touched the
floor a second arrow came and struck fairly in the very place where
I had been, and stood quivering in the bedding.

Then was a yell from outside, and before Owen could stay me I
looked through the window, recklessly enough maybe, but with a
feeling that no more arro