like a mask added to her disguise. The blackness of her hair was equally
unconnected with Northern dreams of beautiful maidens. "Dark-haired women,
like slaves, black and bad," was the proverb of the Danish camps. Some
fair-tressed ancestor back in the past must have qualified his blood from the
veins of an Irish captive; in no other way could one account for those locks,
and for her eyes that were of the grayish blue of iris petals.

The eyes were a little staring this morning, as though still stretched wide
with the horror of the things they had looked upon; and all the glowing red
blood had ebbed away from the brown cheeks.

She said in a low voice, "My father... Fridtjof..." then stopped to draw a
long hard breath through her set teeth.

For the moment Sister Wynfreda was not a nun but a woman,--a woman with a
great yearning tenderness that might have been a beautiful mother-love. She
ran to the girl and caught her tremblingly by the hands, feeling up her arms
to her shoulders and about her face, as if to make sure that she was really
unharmed.

"Praise the Lord that you are delivered whole to me!" she breathed. "Gram told
us--that they had taken you."

Gazing at her out of horror-filled eyes, Randalin stood quite still in her
embrace. Her story came from her in jerks, and each fragment seemed to leave
her breathless, though she spoke slowly.

"I broke away," she said. "They stood around me in a ring. Norman Leofwinesson
said he would carry me before a priest and marry me, so that Avalcomb might be
his lawfully, whichever king got the victory. I said by no means would I wed