t the end of
the cave--there by the dead men?"

"Their spirits, perchance," answered Godwin, drawing his sword
and leaning forward. Then he looked, and true enough there stood
two figures faintly outlined in the gloom. They glided towards
them, and now the level moonlight shone upon their white robes
and gleamed in the gems they wore.

"I cannot see them," said a voice. "Oh, those dead soldiers--what
do they portend?"

"At least yonder stand their horses," answered another voice.

Now the brethren guessed the truth, and, like men in a dream,
stepped forward from the shadow of the wall.

"Rosamund!" they said.

"Oh Godwin! oh Wulf!" she cried in answer. "Oh, Jesu, I thank
Thee, I thank Thee--Thee, and this brave woman!" and, casting her
arms about Masouda, she kissed her on the face.

Masouda pushed her back, and said, in a voice that was almost
harsh: "It is not fitting, Princess, that your pure lips should
touch the cheek of a woman of the Assassins."

But Rosamund would not be repulsed.

"It is most fitting," she sobbed, "that I should give you thanks
who but for you must also have become 'a woman of the Assassins,'
or an inhabitant of the House of Death."

Then Masouda kissed her back, and, thrusting her away into the
arms of Wulf, said roughly:

"So, pilgrims Peter and John, your patron saints have brought you
through so far; and, John, you fight right well. Nay, do not stop
for our story, if you wish us to live to tell it. What! You have
the soldiers' horses with your own? Well done! I did not credit
you with so much wit. Now, Sir Wulf, can you walk? Yes; so much
the better; it will save you a rough ride, for this place is
steep, though not so steep as one you know of. Now set the
princess upon Flame, for no cat is surer-footed than that horse,
as you may remember, Peter. I who know the path will lead it.
John, take you the other two; Peter, do you follow last of all
with Smoke, and, if they hang back, prick them with your sword.
Come, Flame, be not afraid, Flame. Where I go, you can come," and
Masouda thrust her way through the bushes and over the edge of
the cliff, talking to the snorting horse and patting its neck.

A minute more, and they were scrambling down a mountain ridge so
steep that it seemed as though they must fall and be dashed to
pieces at the bottom. Yet they fell not, for, made as it had been
to meet such hours of need, this road was safer than it appeared,
with ridges cut in the