TO THE LADY TIPHAINE. CHAPTER XXX. HOW THE BRUSHWOOD MEN CAME TO THE CHATEAU OF VILLEFRANCHE. CHAPTER XXXI. HOW FIVE MEN HELD THE KEEP OF VILLEFRANCHE CHAPTER XXXII. HOW THE COMPANY TOOK COUNSEL ROUND THE FALLEN TREE. CHAPTER XXXIII. HOW THE ARMY MADE THE PASSAGE OF RONCESVALLES. CHAPTER XXXIV. HOW THE COMPANY MADE SPORT IN THE VALE OF PAMPELUNA. CHAPTER XXXV. HOW SIR NIGEL HAWKED AT AN EAGLE. CHAPTER XXXVI. HOW SIR NIGEL TOOK THE PATCH FROM HIS EYE. CHAPTER XXXVII. HOW THE WHITE COMPANY CAME TO BE DISBANDED. CHAPTER XXXVIII. OF THE HOME-COMING TO HAMPSHIRE.  

   

    

       CHAPTER I. HOW THE BLACK SHEEP CAME FORTH FROM THE FOLD.     

       The great bell of Beaulieu was ringing. Far away through the forest might be heard its musical clangor and swell. Peat-cutters on Blackdown and fishers upon the Exe heard the distant throbbing rising and falling upon the sultry summer air. It was a common sound in those parts—as common as the chatter of the jays and the booming of the bittern. Yet the fishers and the peasants raised their heads and looked questions at each other, for the angelus had already gone and vespers was still far off. Why should the great bell of Beaulieu toll when the shadows were neither short nor long?     

       All round the Abbey the monks were trooping in. Under the long green-paved avenues of gnarled oaks and of lichened beeches the white-robed brothers gathered to the sound. From the vine-yard and the vine-press, from the bouvary or ox-farm, from the marl-pits and salterns, even from the distant iron-works of Sowley and the outlying grange of St. Leonard's, they had all turned their steps homewards. It had been no sudden call. A swift       messenger had the night before sped round to the outlying dependencies of the Abbey, and had left the summons for every monk to be back in the cloisters by the third hour after noontide. So urgent a message had not been issued within the memory of old lay-brother Athanasius, who had cleaned the Abbey knocker since the year after the Battle of Bannockburn.     

       A stranger who knew nothing either of the Abbey or of its immense resources might have gathered from the appearance of the brothers some conception of the varied duties which they were called upon to perform, and of the busy, wide-spread 

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