eyes narrowing to mere slits and face hardening. 

 “That I be,” replied the girl, “an’ from your face I take it you have little love for a De Montfort,” she added, smiling. 

 “An’ whither may you be bound, Lady Bertrade de Montfort? Be you niece or daughter of the devil, yet still you be a woman, and I do not war against women. Wheresoever you would go will I accompany you to safety.” 

 “I was but now bound, under escort of five of my father’s knights, to visit Mary, daughter of John de Stutevill of Derby.” 

 “I know the castle well,” answered Norman of Torn, and the shadow of a grim smile played about his lips, for scarce sixty days had elapsed since he had reduced the stronghold, and levied tribute on the great baron. “Come, you have not far to travel now, and if we make haste you shall sup with your friend before dark.” 

 So saying, he mounted his horse and was turning to retrace their steps down the road when he noticed the body of the dead knight lying where it had fallen. 

 “Ride on,” he called to Bertrade de Montfort, “I will join you in an instant.” 

 Again dismounting, he returned to the side of his late adversary, and lifting the dead knight’s visor, drew upon the forehead with the point of his dagger the letters NT. 

 The girl turned to see what detained him, but his back was toward her and he knelt beside his fallen foeman, and she did not see his act. Brave daughter of a brave sire though she was, had she seen what he did, her heart would have quailed within her and she would have fled in terror from the clutches of this scourge of England, whose mark she had seen on the dead foreheads of a dozen of her father’s knights and kinsmen. 

 Their way to Stutevill lay past the cottage of Father Claude, and here Norman of Torn stopped to don his armor. Now he rode once more with lowered visor, and in silence, a little to the rear of Bertrade de Montfort that he might watch her face, which, of a sudden, had excited his interest. 

 Never before, within the scope of his memory, had he been so close to a young and beautiful woman for so long a period of time, although he had often seen women in the castles that had fallen before his vicious and terrible attacks. While stories were abroad of his vile treatment of women captives, there was no truth in them. They were merely spread by his 

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