e upon his old, malicious face.

"'Tis to transcend even my dearest dreams," he muttered. "'S death,
but he be more a king than Henry himself. God speed the day of his
coronation, when, before the very eyes of the Plantagenet hound, a black
cap shall be placed upon his head for a crown; beneath his feet the
platform of a wooden gibbet for a throne."

CHAPTER VII

It was a beautiful spring day in May, 1262, that Norman of Torn rode
alone down the narrow trail that led to the pretty cottage with which he
had replaced the hut of his old friend, Father Claude.

As was his custom, he rode with lowered visor, and nowhere upon his
person or upon the trappings of his horse were sign or insignia of rank
or house. More powerful and richer than many nobles of the court, he was
without rank or other title than that of outlaw and he seemed to assume
what in reality he held in little esteem.

He wore armor because his old guardian had urged him to do so, and not
because he craved the protection it afforded. And, for the same cause,
he rode always with lowered visor, though he could never prevail upon
the old man to explain the reason which necessitated this precaution.

"It is enough that I tell you, my son," the old fellow was wont to say,
"that for your own good as well as mine, you must not show your face to
your enemies until I so direct. The time will come and soon now, I hope,
when you shall uncover your countenance to all England."

The young man gave the matter but little thought, usually passing it off
as the foolish whim of an old dotard; but he humored it nevertheless.

Behind him, as he rode down the steep declivity that day, loomed a very
different Torn from that which he had approached sixteen years before,
when, as a little boy he had ridden through the darkening shadows of
the night, perched upon a great horse behind the little old woman, whose
metamorphosis to the little grim, gray, old man of Torn their advent to
the castle had marked.

Today the great, frowning pile loomed larger and more imposing than ever
in the most resplendent days of its past grandeur. The original keep was
there with its huge, buttressed Saxon towers whose mighty fifteen foot
walls were pierced with stairways and vaulted chambers, lighted by
embrasures which, mere slits in the outer periphery of the walls, spread
to larger dimensions within, some even attaining the area of small
triangular chambers.

The moat, widened and dee