they evidently belonged to the castle, not to the troop. When they finally
rose into the air, Pere Azuli, the veteran blue pigeon, and Rien-du-Tout,
the little dun-colored stray Peirol had trained, were almost out of sight.
The luckless Blanchette was lagging, and despite her frantic attempts to
escape her enemy she was soon struggling in the falcon's grip. Clair de la
Lune, the other white pigeon, seemed about to meet the same fate when
something unexpected happened.

Two wild hawks, beating up from the south, spied the pigeons, and pounced
one upon the tercel with the dove in his talons, the other upon Clair de
la Lune. In the scrimmage which followed Blanchette's little body fell
into the river, and the strange hawk gave chase to Pere Azuli, while her
mate began to devour Clair de la Lune at his leisure. The ruffled and
bewildered tercels were whistled back, and neither Garin de Biterres nor
his prisoners could be certain in the gathering twilight whether any of
the pigeons had escaped their pursuers.

The pigeon-chase had taken the attention of de Biterres and his men so
completely for a few minutes that Ranulph, without seeming to do so, came
near to Lady Philippa. A tiny roll of paper encased in a withered leaf
dropped from his fingers on the furred edge of her mantle. She bent to
shake off the leaf and her hand closed quietly over the letter. When
Ranulph had gone to sing ballads of the camp among the troopers, and the
young girls had been ceremoniously escorted to their guarded room, she
unrolled and read the missive. It was not long. "Dear and Honored Lady--I
pray you pardon the fooleries of the night, since in this way only could I
hope to escape the surveillance of these miscreants and do you service.
The pigeons we are loosing bear messages telling of your doleful plight,
and I doubt not that when it becomes known, help will come to you. Sir
Gualtier Giffard is, as you know, at your father's castle awaiting