g this princess of Navarre, I agree with our
friend, it would be a righteous deed to poniard her, and so to remove the
cause of dispute between the two kings, and, indeed, the two nations.
This insult laid upon our princess is more than we, as French knights and
gentlemen, can brook; and if the king says the word, there is not a
gentleman in the army but will be ready to turn his sword against the
islanders."

Then the smooth voice spoke again.

"It would, my brethren, be wrong and useless to shed blood; but methinks,
that if this apple of discord could be removed, a good work would be
done; not, as our friend the count has suggested, by a stab of the
dagger; that indeed would be worse than useless. But surely there are
scores of religious houses, where this bird might be placed in a cage
without a soul knowing where she was, and where she might pass her life
in prayer that she may be pardoned for having caused grave hazards of the
failure of an enterprise in which all the Christian world is concerned."

The voices of the speakers now fell, and Cuthbert was straining his ear
to listen, when he heard footsteps approaching the tent, and he glided
away into the darkness.

With great difficulty he recovered the road to the camp, and when he
reached his tent he confided to the Earl of Evesham what he had heard.

"This is serious indeed," the earl said, "and bodes no little trouble
and danger. It is true that the passion which King Richard has conceived
for Berengaria bids fair to wreck the Crusade, by the anger which it has
excited in the French king and his nobles; but the disappearance of the
princess would no less fatally interfere with it, for the king would be
like a raging lion deprived of his whelps, and would certainly move no
foot eastward until he had exhausted all the means in his power of
tracing his lost lady love. You could not, I suppose, Cuthbert, point out
the tent where this conversation took place?"

"I could not," Cuthbert answered; "in the darkness one tent is like
another. I think I should recognize the voices of the speakers did I hear
them again; indeed, one voice I did recognize, it was that of the Count
of Brabant, with whom we had trouble before."

"That is good," the earl said, "because we have at least an object to
watch. It would never do to tell the king what you have heard. In the
first place, his anger would be so great that it would burst all
bounds, and would cause, likely enough, a