that
Issa was safe. Already Sir Gavan had her in his arms, and before the
horseman had fully found himself the fugitives were under the shadow of
the keep's walls.

The question of his own danger did not immediately concern Constans; he
had no eyes for anything but Night lying there in her agony. His father
had given him the horse when she was a foal of a week old, and Constans
had broken and trained her himself. Well, she had served him faithfully,
and in return he would show her the last mercy. His knife-sheath hung
from his girdle; he drew out the blade and drove it home just behind the
glossy black shoulder. Night shuddered and lay still. The knife had
sunken deep, and Constans had to exert all his strength to withdraw it.
The bare point of a rapier touched him meaningly on the arm; he stood up
and faced his enemy.

The man on horseback laughed softly. "Oho, my young cockerel, it was but
a touch of the gaff, and now that you are ready is reason sufficient why
I should prefer to wait. But that neither of us may forget--" He bent
down and caught Constans by the shoulders, turning him around and
forcing him backward until his head rested against the blood-bay's
withers. Two slashes of his hunting-knife and a tiny, triangular nick
appeared on the upper part of the lad's right ear.

"That is my sign-manual of which I spoke to you an hour or more ago. It
is Quinton Edge's mark, as all men know, and it brands whatever bears it
as Quinton Edge's property. Some day I may deem it worth while to claim
my own; until then you can be my caretaker, my tenant. What! no answer?
And yet it is a generous offer, I think, considering how sore my arm has
grown and how impertinently you behaved just now in interfering between
me and a lady. Light of God! but she is a bewitching bundle of
femineity. But twice, boy, have I seen her; hardly a dozen words have
passed----"

He stopped abruptly and gazed hard at Constans. Then slowly:

"Your sister, I take it; there is the same straight line of eyebrow. No
answer again? Well, we will pass it over for the nonce; you have still
many things to learn, and, chiefly, to becomingly order body and soul in
the presence of your lord. After all, it pleases me better to have the
last word from the lady's own lips; she had been most discourteously
treated, and I would fain be shriven. Until we meet again, then."

The cavalier put spur to the blood-bay's flank and rode straight for the
Great House. Th