de and the Outlaw of Torn were one
and the same.

If she wants me then, he thought, but she will not. No it is impossible.
It is better that she marry her French prince than to live, dishonored,
the wife of a common highwayman; for though she might love me at first,
the bitterness and loneliness of her life would turn her love to hate.

As the outlaw was sitting one day in the little cottage of Father
Claude, the priest reverted to the subject of many past conversations;
the unsettled state of civil conditions in the realm, and the stand
which Norman of Torn would take when open hostilities between King and
baron were declared.

"It would seem that Henry," said the priest, "by his continued breaches
of both the spirit and letter of the Oxford Statutes, is but urging the
barons to resort to arms; and the fact that he virtually forced Prince
Edward to take up arms against Humphrey de Bohun last fall, and to carry
the ravages of war throughout the Welsh border provinces, convinces me
that he be, by this time, well equipped to resist De Montfort and his
associates."

"If that be the case," said Norman of Torn, "we shall have war and
fighting in real earnest ere many months."

"And under which standard does My Lord Norman expect to fight?" asked
Father Claude.

"Under the black falcon's wing," laughed he of Torn.

"Thou be indeed a close-mouthed man, my son," said the priest, smiling.
"Such an attribute helpeth make a great statesman. With thy soldierly
qualities in addition, my dear boy, there be a great future for thee in
the paths of honest men. Dost remember our past talk?"

"Yes, father, well; and often have I thought on't. I have one more duty
to perform here in England and then, it may be, that I shall act on thy
suggestion, but only on one condition."

"What be that, my son?"

"That wheresoere I go, thou must go also. Thou be my best friend; in
truth, my father; none other have I ever known, for the little old
man of Torn, even though I be the product of his loins, which I much
mistrust, be no father to me."

The priest sat looking intently at the young man for many minutes before
he spoke.

Without the cottage, a swarthy figure skulked beneath one of the
windows, listening to such fragments of the conversation within as came
to his attentive ears. It was Spizo, the Spaniard. He crouched entirely
concealed by a great lilac bush, which many times before had hid his
traitorous form.

At length the pri