ook would
nerve a jackal to attack a drove of lions, thought the outlaw. What a
beautiful creature she was; and she had stayed there with him during the
fight. He remembered now. Mary de Stutevill had not been with her as he
had caught that glimpse of her, no, she had been all alone. Ah! That was
friendship indeed!

What else was it that tried to force its way above the threshold of his
bruised and wavering memory? Words? Words of love? And lips pressed to
his? No, it must be but a figment of his wounded brain.

What was that which clicked against his breastplate? He felt, and found
a metal bauble linked to a mesh of his steel armor by a strand of silken
hair. He carried the little thing to the window, and in the waning light
made it out to be a golden hair ornament set with precious stones, but
he could not tell if the little strand of silken hair were black or
brown. Carefully he detached the little thing, and, winding the filmy
tress about it, placed it within the breast of his tunic. He was vaguely
troubled by it, yet why he could scarcely have told, himself.

Again turning to the window, he watched the lighted rooms within his
vision, and presently his view was rewarded by the sight of a knight
coming within the scope of the narrow casement of a nearby chamber.

From his apparel, he was a man of position, and he was evidently in
heated discussion with some one whom Norman of Torn could not see. The
man, a great, tall black-haired and mustached nobleman, was pounding
upon a table to emphasize his words, and presently he sprang up
as though rushing toward the one to whom he had been speaking. He
disappeared from the watcher's view for a moment and then, at the far
side of the apartment, Norman of Torn saw him again just as he roughly
grasped the figure of a woman who evidently was attempting to escape
him. As she turned to face her tormentor, all the devil in the Devil of
Torn surged in his aching head, for the face he saw was that of Joan de
Tany.

With a muttered oath, the imprisoned man turned to hurl himself against
the bolted door, but ere he had taken a single step, the sound of heavy
feet without brought him to a stop, and the jingle of keys as one was
fitted to the lock of the door sent him gliding stealthily to the wall
beside the doorway, where the inswinging door would conceal him.

As the door was pushed back, a flickering torch lighted up, but dimly,
the interior, so that until he had reached the c