omise me that you will not tell him where I am or even that
you have seen me."

"But--but----"

"Remember now that you have promised."

Constans felt himself called upon to speak with some severity to this
unreasonable young person.

"You are giving a great deal of trouble to your friends," he said,
reprovingly.

"My friends!" she echoed, mockingly.

"There was your mother and her message to your uncle Hugolin in Croye."

"Yes, I know," she broke in. "Then it was received--the message----?"
She stopped, unable to go on; an indefinable emotion possessed her.

"My uncle has sent you to fetch me," she whispered. "You are his
messenger."

Constans had to answer her honestly, and was sorry.

"No," he said, bluntly. "Messer Hugolin could not see his way to
anything."

Her pride came to her aid. "Oh, it does not matter," she said, and so
indifferently that Constans was deceived.

"But you cannot stay here," he insisted--"here among the Doomsmen."

"They are my father's people, and you have just told me that my uncle
Hugolin does not want me."

"And what does Quinton Edge desire of you?" he asked.

"I do not know," she answered, returning his gaze fearlessly, whereof
Constans was glad, although he could not have told her why.

"Yet you are a prisoner?"

"It seems so, and my sister Nanna as well. But we have nothing of which
to complain, and doubtless our master will acquaint us with his pleasure
in good time."

"It is always that way," said Constans, bitterly. "His will against mine
at every turn; a rock upon which I beat with naked hands."

"He is a strong man," answered Esmay, thoughtfully, "but I think I know
where his power lies. It is simply that neither his friends nor his
enemies are aware of how they stand with him."

But Constans did not even notice that she was speaking; the remembrance
of his unfulfilled purpose seized and racked him. He had hated this man,
Quinton Edge, from that first moment in which their eyes had
clashed--ever and always. At first instinctively; then with reason
enough and to spare; and yet this small world still held them both. How
long were his hands to be tied? Once and again his enemy had stood
before him and had gone his way insolently triumphant. He might be now
in the house yonder, and Constans looked at it eagerly. A master
passion, primitive and crude, possessed him.

The girl divined the hostile nature of the power which held him, and
instinctively she put fo