how it is garrisoned, and convey a message to
Catharine alone."

"You are a dead man first!" exclaimed Diccon. "This were folly, Master
Roger. A lion's den were safer than the Manor."

"None shall pierce my disguise if you, good Diccon, will but aid to
trick me out for the part I fain would play. I wot I could count on your
faith!"

"To the last drop of my blood. Yet it is a rash venture, and one that
ill pleases me," replied the old man sadly.

Late that same afternoon the golden shafts of the warm spring sunshine
were finding their way through the narrow windows of an upper room in
the Manor. The house in those days was but a quarter of its present
size; it was strongly fortified, and bore more resemblance to a medieval
keep than to the Tudor mansion of later times. Strength and defence had
been considered before beauty and elegance, and there was little even of
comfort to be found inside the stern, forbidding walls. In the apartment
in question some rude attempt had been made to render things more
habitable than in the rest of the grim establishment. A few pieces of
tapestry covered the rough masonry, and the floor was strewn with fresh
rushes. On a carved wooden bench by the window sat a fair and beautiful
girl of seventeen, who was occupying herself with a piece of needlework,
and talking earnestly meanwhile to her attendant, a maiden of her own
age, busy also with her tambour frame.

"I tell thee, Anne, I will not wed him--not if he drag me by force to
the altar! Verily, it is a pretty case. Here be I a prisoner in mine own
manor, my estates squandered, my tenants oppressed and robbed, my
retainers dismissed, save only thee, my poor faithful Anne; and in
return I am to wed him to boot! Nay! Rather will I take the veil and
give all my goods to the convent of St. Agatha at Torton; though thou
knowest I have scant mind to be a nun."

"It wants but five morns now to the bridal day," sighed Anne. "If I
mistake not, lady, Sir Mervyn will wed you even against your will and
despite the convent."

"Then I will die first! Oh, Roger, Roger!" she added softly to herself,
"only a year agone, and I was thy betrothed! It is six months since I
had tidings of thee, and whether thou art alive or dead I know not."

"Nay, weep not, sweet lady--weeping cures no ills," said Anne; then,
wishful to divert her mistress's sad thoughts, she directed her
attention to a commotion which was going on in the courtyard below.
"Some stra