"Heigho!" sighed Sir Benedict, "thou'rt a fair sized babe to bear
within a cloak, and thou hast been baptized in blood ere now--and there
be more riddles for thee, boy, and so, until we meet, fare thee well,
messire Beltane!"

So saying, Sir Benedict of Bourne smiled his twisted smile and,
wheeling his horse, rode away down the glade, his mail glistening in
the early light and his lance point winking and twinkling amid the
green.



CHAPTER II

HOW BELTANE HAD WORD WITH THE DUKE, BLACK IVO


Now it fell out upon a day, that as Beltane strode the forest ways,
there met him a fine cavalcade, gay with the stir of broidered
petticoat and ermined mantle; and, pausing beneath a tree, he stood to
hearken to the soft, sweet voices of the ladies and to gaze enraptured
upon their varied beauty. Foremost of all rode a man richly habited, a
man of great strength and breadth of shoulder, and of a bearing high
and arrogant. His face, framed in long black hair that curled to meet
his shoulder, was of a dark and swarthy hue, fierce looking and
masterful by reason of prominent chin and high-arched nose, and of his
thin-lipped, relentless mouth. Black were his eyes and bold; now
staring bright and wide, now glittering 'twixt heavy, narrowed lids;
yet when he smiled they glittered brightest, and his lips showed
moistly red. Beside him rode a lady of a wondrous dark beauty, sleepy