foes, taking gold from their hands! Could she have honor who would thus make
friends with the slayers of her kin? Randalin watched her wonderingly until
leaves shut out the picture.

Another sentinel hailed her, and she gave him absently her customary answer.
He pointed to a great striped tent of red and white linen, adorned with
fluttering streamers and guarded by more sentries in shining mail; and she
rode toward it in a daze.

More revellers sprawled under these trees, and she looked at them curiously.
The women here did not seem to be amusing themselves so well. One was weeping;
and one--a slip of a girl with a face like a rose--was trying vainly to rise
from her place beside a drunken warrior, who held her hands and strove to pull
her lips down to his wine-stained mouth. In imagination Randalin felt again
Norman's arm around her waist, and a wild pity was quickened in her. This was
worse than drudgery, worse than blows! For the credit of Danish warriors, it
was well that Sister Wynfreda could not see this.

Again her own words raised a startling apparition. What had been the Sister's
last cry of warning? "It is not their cruelty I fear for you. Child, listen!
It is not their blows--" Could it be possible that this was what--

Like a merciless answer came a scream from the girl,--a short piercing cry of
horror and loathing and agonized appeal as she was drawn down upon the leering
face. At that cry, childhood's blind trust died forever in Randalin. As she
rode past the pair, with clenched hands and flashing eyes, she knew without
reasoning that tortures would not tear from her the secret of her disguise.

When the sentinel before the tent challenged her roughly, it was her tongue,
not her brain, that answered him.