ho feigns illness, is also left. And now begins the tragic and
striking part of the story.

The next day after Joce had gone, Marion sent a message to
Sir Ernault de Lyls, begging him, for the great love that
there was between them, not to forget the pledges they had
exchanged, but to come quickly to speak with her at the
castle of Dinan, because the lord and the lady and the bulk
of the servants had gone to Hertilande--also to come to the
same place by which he had left the castle. [_He replies
asking her to send him the exact height of the wall (which
she unsuspiciously does by the usual means of a silk thread)
and also the number of the household left. Then he seeks his
chief, and tells him, with a mixture of some truth, that the
object of the Hertilande journey is to gather strength
against Lacy, capture his castle of Ewyas, and kill
himself--intelligence which he falsely attributes to Marion.
He has, of course, little difficulty in persuading Lacy to
take the initiative. Sir Ernault is entrusted with a
considerable mixed force, and comes by night to the
castle._] The night was very dark, so that no sentinel saw
them. Sir Ernault took a squire to carry the ladder of hide,
and they went to the window where Marion was waiting for
them. And when she saw them, never was any so joyful: so she
dropped a cord right down and drew up the hide ladder and
fastened it to a battlement. Then Ernault lightly scaled the
tower, and took his love in his arms and kissed her: and
they made great joy of each other and went into another room
and supped, and then went to their couch, and left the
ladder hanging.

But the squire who had carried it went to the forces hidden
in the garden and elsewhere, and took them to the ladder.
And one hundred men, well armed, mounted by it and descended
by the Pendover tower and went by the wall behind the
chapel, and found the sentinel too heavy with sleep to
defend himself: and the knights and the sergeants were cut
to pieces crying for mercy in their beds. But Sir Ernault's
companions were pitiless, and many a white sheet was dyed
red with blood. And at last they tossed the watchman into
the deep fosse and broke his neck.

Now Marion de la Briere lay by her lover Sir Ernault and
knew nothing of the trea