leaming upon
his hair and his beard. He held something which flashed in his right
hand, and he stooped at the threshold to unloose the black hound.

"This way!" the woman whispered, in a low eager voice. "Through the
bushes to that forked ash. Do not heed me; I can run as fast as you, I
trow. Now into the stream--right in, over ankles, to throw the dog off,
though I think it is but a common cur, like its master." As she spoke,
she sprang herself into the shallow stream and ran swiftly up the
centre of it, with the brown water bubbling over her feet and her
hand out-stretched toward the clinging branches of bramble or sapling.
Alleyne followed close at her heels, with his mind in a whirl at this
black welcome and sudden shifting of all his plans and hopes. Yet, grave
as were his thoughts, they would still turn to wonder as he looked at
the twinkling feet of his guide and saw her lithe figure bend this way
and that, dipping under boughs, springing over stones, with a lightness
and ease which made it no small task for him to keep up with her. At
last, when he was almost out of breath, she suddenly threw herself down
upon a mossy bank, between two holly-bushes, and looked ruefully at her
own dripping feet and bedraggled skirt.

"Holy Mary!" said she, "what shall I do? Mother will keep me to my
chamber for a month, and make me work at the tapestry of the nine bold
knights. She promised as much last week, when I fell into Wilverley bog,
and yet she knows that I cannot abide needle-work."

Alleyne, still standing in the stream, glanced down at the graceful
pink-and-white figure, the curve of raven-black hair, and the proud,
sensitive face which looked up frankly and confidingly at his own.

"We had best on," he said. "He may yet overtake us."

"Not so. We are well off his land now, nor can he tell in this great
wood which way we have taken. But you--you had him at your mercy. Why
did you not kill him?"

"Kill him! My brother!"

"And why not?"--with a quick gleam of her white teeth. "He would have
killed you. I know him, and I read it in his eyes. Had I had your staff
I would have tried--aye, and done it, too." She shook her clenched white
hand as she spoke, and her lips tightened ominously.

"I am already sad in heart for what I have done," said he, sitting down
on the bank, and sinking his face into his hands. "God help me!--all
that is worst in me seemed to come uppermost. Another instant, and I
had smitten him: the