* * * * *

"Hist!" Mallory whispered. "I heard something."

For a moment the light flared wildly as though she had nearly dropped
the torch. "Wh ... whence came the sound, fair knight?"

"From the other side of the stream." He peered into the vacillating
shadows, but saw nothing but the darker shadows of one of the
innumerable man-made caves. The sound he had heard had brought to mind
the dull clang that metal makes when it collides with stone, and it
had been so faint as to have been barely audible above the purling of
the stream. Thinking back, he was not altogether certain that he had
heard it at all. "My imagination's getting the best of me, I guess,"
he said presently. "There's no one there."

Her warm breath penetrated the crevices of his gorget and fanned the
back of his neck. "Ye ... ye ween not that it could have been the
fiend prowling?"

"Of course I ween not! Relax, and finish your story. But get to the
point, will you?"

"An ... an it so please.... And then Sir Bors cried: Sir knight, let
your hand off that maiden, or ye be but dead. And then he set down the
maiden, and was armed at all pieces save he lacked his spear. Then he
dressed his shield, and drew out his sword, and Bors smote him so hard
that it went through his shield and habergeon on the left shoulder.
And through great strength he beat him down to the earth, and at the
pulling out of Bors' spear there he swooned. Then came Bors to the
maid and said: How seemeth it to you of this knight ye be delivered at
this time? Now sir, said she, I pray you lead me there as this knight
had me. So shall I do gladly: and took the horse of the wounded
knight, and set the gentlewoman upon him, and so brought her as she
desired. Sir knight, said she, ye have better sped than ye weened, for
an I had lost my maidenhead, five hundred men should have died for it.
What knight was he that had you in the forest? By my faith, said she,
he is my cousin. So wot I never with what engyn the fiend enchafed
him, for yesterday he took me from my father privily; for I nor none
of my father's men mistrusted him not, and if he had had my maidenhead
he should have died for the sin, and his body shamed and dishonored
for ever. Thus as--"

"_Shhh!_"

This time, Mallory was certain that he had heard something. The sound
had had much in common with the previous sound, except that it had
suggested metal scraping against, rather than colliding with, sto