covery of the holy sepulcher from the infidels, should be wrecked
by the headstrong fancies of one man. It is even, as is told by the old
Grecian poet, as when Helen caused a great war between people of that
nation."

"I know nothing," another voice said, "either of Helen or the Greeks, or
of their poets. They are a shifty race, and I can believe aught that is
bad of them. But touching 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 be 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 spe