us holding her, he wooed the girl tempestuously. Here, indeed,
was Sieur Hercules enslaved, burned by a fiercer fire than that of
Nessus, and the huge bulk of the unconquerable visibly shaken by his
adoration. In the disordered tapestry of verbiage, passion-flapped as
a flag is by the wind, she presently beheld herself prefigured by
Balkis, the Judean's lure, and by the Princess of Cyprus (in
Aristotle's time), and by Nicolette, the King's daughter of
Carthage--since the first flush of morning was as a rush-light before
her resplendency, the man swore; and in conclusion, by the Countess of
Tripolis, for love of whom he had cleft the seas, and losing whom he
must inevitably die as Rudel did. He snapped his fingers now over any
consideration of Guienne. He would conquer for her all Muscovy and all
Cataia, too, if she desired mere acreage. Meanwhile he wanted her, and
his hard and savage passion beat down opposition as with a bludgeon.

"Heart's emperor," the trembling girl more lately said, "I think that
you were cast in some larger mould than we of France. Oh, none of us
may dare resist you! and I know that nothing matters, nothing in all
the world, save that you love me. Then take me, since you will it--and
not as King, since you will otherwise, but as Edward Plantagenet. For
listen! by good luck you have this afternoon despatched Rigon for
Chevrieul, where tomorrow we hunt the great boar. And in consequence
to-night this hut will be unoccupied."

The man was silent. He had a gift that way when occasion served.

"Here, then, beau sire! here, then, at nine, you are to meet me with my
chaplain. Behold, he marries us, as glibly as though we two were
peasants. Poor king and princess!" cried Dame Blanch, and in a voice
which thrilled him, "shall ye not, then, dare to be but man and woman?"

"Ha!" the King said. He laughed. "The King is pleased to loose his
prisoner; and I will do it." He fiercely said this, for the girl was
very beautiful.

So he came that night, without any retinue, and habited as a forester,
a horn swung about his neck, into the unlighted hut of Rigon the
forester, and found a woman there, though not the woman whom he had
perhaps expected.

"Treachery, beau sire! Horrible treachery!" she wailed.

"I have encountered it ere this," the big man said.

"Presently comes not Blanch but Philippe, with many men to back him.
And presently they will slay you. You have been trapped, beau sire