started on the backs of hares, and a four-horse wain could travel in
safety over swamps where at any other time a schoolboy dared not set his
foot.

On such an eve, with snow threatening, the great marsh was utterly
desolate, and this was why these two had chosen it for their meeting
place.

To look on they were a goodly pair--the girl, who was clothed in the red
she always wore, tall, dark, well shaped, with large black eyes and a
determined face, one who would make a very stately woman; the man broad
shouldered, with grey eyes that were quick and almost fierce, long
limbed, hard, agile, and healthy, one who had never known sickness, who
looked as though the world were his own to master. He was young, but
three-and-twenty that day, and his simple dress, a tunic of thick wool
fastened round him with a leathern belt, to which hung a short sword,
showed that his degree was modest.

The girl, although she seemed his elder, in fact was only in her
twentieth year. Yet from her who had been reared in the hard school of
that cruel age childhood had long departed, leaving her a ripened woman
before her time.

This pair stood looking at each other.

"Well, Cousin Eve Clavering," said the man, in his clear voice, "why did
your message bid me meet you in this cold place?"

"Because I had a word to say to you, Cousin Hugh de Cressi," she
answered boldly; "and the marsh being so cold and so lonesome I thought