ogo swore a deep oath.

"We were too weak, my lord, to interrupt the party, and we did not
know in time what they were about. But one thing I heard the
demoiselle said, which you should hear, although it may not be
pleasant."

"Well!"

"Although my first love be dead, I will never marry a man who
poisoned his aunt.'"

"They have to prove it--let them."

"My lord, the old hag who sold you the phial, as she says, yet
lives, and I fear prates."

"She shall do so no longer. Get a party of half a dozen of your
tenderest lambs ready for secret service. We will start two hours
before dawn, when all the world is fast asleep. See that you are
all ready and call me."

All lonely stood the hut--in the tangled brake--where dwelt a
sinful but repentant woman. For one had broken in upon her life,
and had awakened a conscience which seemed almost non-existent
until he came--our Martin. And this night she tosses on her bed
uneasily.

"Would that he might come again," she says. "I would fain hear more
of Him who can save, as he said, even me."

She mutters no longer spells, but prayers. The stone seems removed
from the door of that sepulchre, her heart. Towards morning sleep,
long wooed in vain, comes over her--and she dozes.

It wants but an hour to dawn, but the night is at its darkest. The
stars still drift over the western sky, but in the east it is
cloudy, and no morning watch from his tower could spy the dawning
day.

Eight men emerge from the deep shade of the tangled wood. In
silence they approach the hut, and first they tie the door outside,
so that the inmate cannot open it.

"Which way is the wind?" whispers the leader.

"In the east."

"Fire the house on that side."

They have with them a dark lantern, from which a torch is fired and
applied to the roof of light reeds on the windward side. We draw a
veil over the quarter of an hour which followed. It was what the
French call un mauvais quart d'heure.

The sun had arisen for some hours when the solitude of the forest
was broken by the tread of three strangers--travellers, who trod
one of its most verdant glades. The one was a brother preacher of
the order of Saint Francis. The second, a knight clad in hunting
attire. The third, the mayor, the headman of the borough of
Hamelsham.

"The cottage lies here away," said the first. "We shall see the
roof when we turn the end of the avenue of beeches."

"Do you not smell an odour unusual to the forest?"