many yards, and I know not what
treasures I saw heaped hastily on this side or on that, and I saw at the
end, where the path passed forth, the form of the sentinel at his post.
Now all our hope lay in what that moment chanced. He lolled easily
against the rock, gazing forth, as I thought dreamily, into the open. My
companion drew me along on tiptoe till we were even a pace behind him.
We were so close that I think I heard him breathe. Then rapidly the man
felt a scarf round his mouth and wiry fingers at his throat, so that he
could make no sound.

"Strike, Nigel!" said my comrade. "There is little time for mercy!"

So I drew my companion's dagger from his waist and used it swiftly,
though it went sore against my nature thus to strike a sentinel at his
post by surprise.

He fell heavily backward. I drew forth the dagger, and we ran swiftly
for the cover of the side of a building. Along the wall we crept warily
and without sound, and the next moment I saw my deliverer swing himself
upon a bough that hung within his reach. In his train I followed, as he
caught wondrous craftily in the darkness now at this branch, now at
that, and more than once passed like an ape or squirrel of the woodland
from tree to tree. At last I looked down and saw the wall loom from
below, and the branch whereon I clung spread across the wall into the
open. There we dropped down right nimbly as I remember a full ten feet,
and the branch swung back from our hands noiselessly, and without sound
we passed swiftly on hands and knees for a space under the near shelter
of the forest brushwood.

Nothing was said till we were a round two hundred yards within, and then
my friend pointed to a little path, for the moon was risen.

"Yonder, dear lad," he said, "lies thy way to the Vale, and I must now
be for a space a dead man in the woods, outcast even of the pirates."

"Nay, friend," said I, "I go not back to the Vale till I come with force
to release them from their woes."

"What!" said he. "Thou still art minded to journey to Normandy? Oh,
dear and knightly lad!"

"Yea," I said, "thither must lie my road, and I pray thee to help me on
my way, for indeed I fear to fall into Geoffrey's jaws again; and now
three days are lost that should have brought me nearer to William."

"If it be indeed thy will," he said, "and indeed thou couldst not will
better, since, as the case is, yonder castle could not many weeks
withstand the Sarrasin, thou must come w