"

"We need not parley here," the knight said coldly. "We shall have plenty
of time when at my castle."

The litter was now lifted, placed between two horses, and proceeded
rapidly on its journey. Although the hope was but faint, yet until the
gates of the castle closed upon them the Lady Margaret still hoped that
rescue might reach her. But the secret had been too well kept, and it
was not until the following day that the man who had been placed in a
cottage near the convent arrived in all haste in the forest, to say that
it was only in the morning that he had learned that the convent had been
broken open by men disguised as archers, and the Lady Margaret carried
off.

Four days elapsed before Sir Rudolph presented himself before the girl
he had captured. So fearfully was his face bruised and disfigured by the
blow from the mailed hand of Cuthbert three weeks before, that he did
not wish to appear before her under such unfavorable circumstances, and
the captive passed the day gazing from her casement in one of the rooms
in the upper part of the keep, toward the forest whence she hoped rescue
would come.

Within the forest hot discussions were going on as to the best course to
pursue. An open attack was out of the question, especially as upon the
day following the arrival there of Lady Margaret three hundred more
mercenaries had marched in from Worcester, so that the garrison was now
raised to five hundred men.

"Is there no way," Cnut exclaimed furiously, "by which we might creep
into this den, since we cannot burst into it openly?"

"There is a way from the castle," Cuthbert said, "for my dear lord told
me of it one day when we were riding together in the Holy Land. He said
then that it might be that he should never return, and that it were well
that I should know of the existence of this passage, which few besides
the earl himself knew of. It is approached by a very heavy slab of stone
in the great hall. This is bolted down, and as it stands under the great
table passes unnoticed, and appears part of the ordinary floor. He told
me the method in which, by touching a spring, the bolts were withdrawn
and the stone could be raised. Thence a passage a quarter of a mile
long leads to the little chapel standing in the hollow, and which, being
hidden among the trees, would be unobserved by any party besieging the
castle. This of course was contrived in order that the garrison, or any
messenger thereof, might make an e