The Pool in the Forest

by Warwick Deeping

 

THE POOL IN THE
FOREST

By WARWICK DEEPING

MISTS were gathering in the valley meadows when John Giffard rode through the eastern purlieus that lay between the forest and Fulk de Corbil's castle of Brent.

On the west, a great beech wood went up against the pale gold of the sunset, and southwards lay a mysterious smother of moorlands and of bog. Fulk de Corbil's valley was a deep, green trough, its black castle and the black water about it softened and made to look more vague and distant by the rising mists.

The King's forest stretched for three leagues west of Brent Castle, and John Giffard was the King's master-forester and lord of the deer.

He had turned his horse into White Hart Walk, and was going softly over the forest turf, when he saw something moving ahead of him, a grey shape that looked like a shred of mist drifting between the trees.

Now, Giffard's men had been talking of a ghost that they had seen in the outlying woods towards Brent. Mat of the Moor swore that he had sent an arrow through it, and that it had uttered no sound, but had melted away into the bracken.

Giffard had doubted these tales, but there was this grey, floating thing about a hundred yards ahead of him, and he touched his horse with the spurs to get a nearer view of it.

The soft turf deadened the sound of his horse's hoofs, and he had cantered some fifty yards before he saw the grey shape turn sharply and pass behind the bole of a great beech tree. Giffard dismounted and, leaving his horse in the ride, went wading through the bracken with one hand on the short sword that he wore. His eyes had marked the trunk of the beech tree from the moment he had seen the unknown thing disappear behind it.

He halted about twenty paces from the tree, conscious that the dusk was falling and that he had no doubt at all that such things as ghosts existed.

"Hallo, there, hallo!"

No one answered him and nothing moved.

He went on another five paces, moving to one side so as to see round the tree.

Suddenly he stopped dead, for the thin, clear note of a bell broke the vast silence of the forest, and a voice uttered a muffled cry of "Beware, beware!"

Giffard crossed himself. The thing behind the tree was a leper.

He went no nearer, but spoke from where he stood.

"Come out into the open, my friend. There is no cause to hide behind that tree."

The thing came out where he could see it, all muffled up in a grey habit, the cowl drawn forward, the leper bell hanging by a strap from its girdle. The face under the cowl was swathed in linen, and nothing but two eyes showed.

Pity stirred in Giffard's heart. Even the repulsiveness of this outcast made his loneliness seem more terrible and tragic. What must life mean to such a creature as this? And perhaps he thanked God for his own youth, for his own clean brown skin, and for the right to look unabashed into the eyes of a man or a maid.

"Peace to you, brother. Why do you wander here—in the forest?"

A thin, smothered voice answered him—

"Where should such as I wander? What does it avail? The birds do not cease singing because a leper is in the wood."

"True, true. But I am the master-forester, my friend, and all those who pass here are under my ken."

"I shall not harm the deer, good sir."

"But my men have come near harming you. To be taken for a ghost may tempt some fool to shoot. I would bid you to make more use of that bell you carry."

"I will ring more often, good sir, and yet, if one of your foresters gave me death, I doubt whether I should grieve."

He seemed to have no more to say, but stood there mutely in the dusk, his hands hidden in the sleeves of his habit.

"How do you come by food here?"

The leper hesitated.

"There is an old woman who keeps a cow and a few pigs on the other side of the forest. She sells me milk and bacon and bread. Do not be angry with her, lording. We do not go near one another. She puts the food under a bush, and I go and take it, and leave money."

"And where do you sleep?"

"In the bracken. I am used to the open sky and the dew. And at night I look at the stars. They are the eyes of heaven, and they do not fear to look upon me."

Giffard would have questioned him further, but his horse was growing restless, and he feared the beast might bolt.

"If at any time you are hungry, friend, come to the Great Lodge, and you shall be fed. And may God and our Lady comfort you!"

The leper bowed his head and murmured words that Giffard could not hear. He went back through the bracken, mounted his horse, and rode on down White Hart Walk, leaving the leper standing under the beech tree.

"Poor soul!" he thought. "Surely this is no warm, blithe world to him, but a land of shadows where Death walks as a friend."

Giffard was hardly out of sight, when the leper went on at a rapid pace through the beech wood, holding the bell clapper so that it made no sound. The grey figure threaded the glooms of the outer woods, and, coming to the meadow-lands, stood at gaze, its face turned towards Fulk de Corbil's great castle. And suddenly it broke into a run, following a thorn hedge that parted two meadows.

Fulk de Corbil had been out hawking, and was riding back, as the dusk fell, with his boon companions and his servants. It was a garish company, gaudily coloured with its slashed sleeves and liripiped hoods, its rich horse-trappings, and its laughter. A cadger walked behind Fulk de Corbil with six fine hawks on the frame. There were women mounted on palfreys, women with gay faces and gayer clothes. Twenty archers in red and green followed behind, for Fulk de Corbil was not loved in those parts, and the forest folk were not gentle.

As they came along the track round the dusky moat towards the bridge gate, Fulk de Corbil had a silver box of sweetmeats on the saddle before him. A gay lady rode on either side of him, and he was twitting them and laughing, holding out the box first to one and then to the other, but drawing it back when they reached out their hands.

"How the dear children have always quarrelled over me!" And he laughed, showing his teeth above his pointed red beard.

"Snatch! Snatch! My hawks are quicker!"

They mocked him in return, and their voices were hard and audacious.

"To be sure, you have always offered much and given nothing!"

"Master Reynard, Mortimer's fox!"

The last gibe stung him, and he turned his lean, fierce face on the woman who had uttered it.

"That tongue of yours is forked, Sancia. All the sweetmeats in this box would not sweeten it. Eloise here——"

A bell jangled suddenly, and they saw standing by the bridge house a grey figure with muffled face, one hand outstretched.

"Have pity, gentles, have pity!"

Fulk de Corbil had the soul of a brute, and Sancia's words angered him so that he cared not whom he hurt.

"What! A death's head! You rotting thing, who sent you here?"

The leper repeated his whine.

"Alms, lording! Have pity!"

Fulk de Corbil pushed his horse forward, raised the silver box, and threw it full in the leper's face.

"Take your breath away from my gate, you dog, or my fellows shall pin your rags to you!"

Then he turned on the woman who had taunted him.

"This rotten apple shall have your sweetmeats, Sancia! Thunder, but it is a pity that there is no cancer to eat out women's tongues!"

When Fulk de Corbil and all his company had ridden through the bridge gate and over the bridge into the castle, the leper stood staring over the moat. Yellow lights were shining out here and there in the black mass, the rays from the loopholes and windows striking the water in the broad moat and making little glimmering trackways that dwindled into the darkness.

Suddenly the grey figure on the edge of the moat thrust out its arms towards Brent Castle in a frenzy of hate.

"Ah, Fulk de Corbil, wretch, traitor, betrayer of good men, beware! The hand that strikes shall have no pity!"

The leper picked up the silver box, emptied the last of the sweetmeats out of it, and hid it away in the wallet that hung at his back.

Three days passed, and John Giffard had warned his men. "Your ghost is nothing more than a poor leper. I spoke with him in White Hart Walk. He will do no harm now that the fence month is over."

There had been trouble in Dewlap Woods. Ragged rascals had broken in there and slain a deer, for Mat of the Moor had found a blood track and the slots of a deer, and a place where men had trampled the bracken. Giffard knew no such thing as fear, and, being the son of a mesne lord, he held that a gentleman should be first when hard knocks might be expected. The forest folk called him "John Strong-in-the-arm," and the women wondered why he did not marry. "No wench proud enough to match him," said some, "though my Lord Fitzpeter's daughter would not say him nay, if he asked her."

A full moon was up, and John Giffard put on a light shirt of ring mail under his green tunic, buckled on a short sword, took his bow and six arrows, and went out alone from the Great Lodge. He struck north by the King's Ride, and held for the Dewlap and Badger Woods, crossing Witch's Bog and going over Heron's Heath. But though he beat all the rides and ways on the north of the forest, he found no trouble there, and heard no sound save the night wind in the trees.

He passed two hours sitting under the Queen's Yew on the edge of the northern purlieus, and just before dawn he started homewards, striking across Heron's Heath for the Black Vale. Now, the Black Vale was the wildest part of the forest, and there were but three living men who knew the paths and the ways. Giffard was one of them, and he entered the Black Vale about dawn.

It was filled with one huge wood of oaks, beeches, and yews, with here and there a forest pool or a wild clearing. Giffard followed Gilimer Brook, a brown stream that ran through the Black Vale. He was near to Gilimer Pool, where the oldest yews in the forest grew, when he heard a sound that made him pause and listen.

There was no doubt as to the sound; it was the note of a bell, casual but half muffled, and it came from the direction of Gilimer Pool. He pushed on cautiously through the tall bracken, reached the yews, and stole through under their black branches.

Then he stood motionless and astonished, leaning on his bow. The yews shut in an open space, and in the centre lay the forest pool, with the dawn light striking through the tops of the yews and throwing golden gleams upon the brown water. And kneeling on a great flat stone at the edge of the pool was the leper Giffard had met in White Hart Walk, and from under the grey cowl hung a mass of red-brown hair.

The leper was a woman!

The cowl hid her face, but suddenly she tossed the cowl back and, leaning forward as she knelt, looked at herself in the water of the pool. Giffard had expected some hideous mask, some whitened, swollen thing, for once in his life he had seen a leper's face, and he had never forgotten it. But this was the face of a girl, fresh and pure as a May morning.

And that wonderful hair of hers hung down till it trailed in the water, and its golds and reds and bronzes were reflected therein as the sunlight caught it.

Giffard held his breath.

She straightened herself, put her hair back, and, stretching her arms wide, drew in deep breaths, as though glad to be free of all those swathings and to feel the sunlight on her face. Her beauty was not a mere thing of the senses. The dark eyes, set well apart, had a smoulder of passion in them. There were touches of scorn about her mouth and nostrils, a scorn that was fine and courageous. And the dusky splendour of her hair seemed to cast a glow upon her, making the white skin and the red lips and the dark eyes more magical.

Giffard hesitated. Then he walked out from under the yews into the morning sunlight.

She was up like a startled deer. He saw her search for something, and found himself covered by a crossbow that she had snatched up out of the grass.

"Come no nearer!"

He showed her his unstrung bow.

"Madame, you and I have met before."

Then she knew him, but she did not lower that crossbow of hers, and he could see her drawing her breath in quickly, like an animal that has been startled.

"Ah, John Giffard!"

For some seconds they stood thus, about fifteen paces apart, looking at each other with watchful eyes.

Suddenly she lowered her crossbow.

"Some men, like some dogs, must be trusted."

He smiled at the words.

"Madame, what shall I say to one caught breaking the forest laws? No one may carry a long bow or an arblast within the forest, save the King's forester and two such men as he shall name. Two nights ago a deer was slain."

She looked at him steadily.

"Deer! Think you I hunt the deer? No, that need not vex you."

"And these clothes and that leper bell?"

"I am afflicted. My face may seem fair——"

He disbelieved her utterly, and she saw that he disbelieved her.

"Maybe you speak not of the body, but of the heart?"

"A leper at heart! Thank you, John Giffard! Is it a leprous thing to hate someone because of a life that has been squandered? No. Neither can one leave certain things to God."

She seemed lost in thought for a moment, and her face looked whiter and more set towards some purpose. Then she raised her eyes to his, and, moving nearer through the bracken, scanned his face intently.

"John Giffard, I have heard it said that you are a strong man and a chivalrous. Your eyes look straight at me, nor do mine flinch from yours."

"Madame, I am what I am. What would you ask of me?"

Her face softened and a kind of radiance covered it.

"Believe what I tell you—that I have a certain vow upon me, that I am here for love of one who is dead. I will tell you my name; it is Judith Pendrell, and I have neither father, husband, brother, nor friend. I come not from these parts, but, because of this vow of mine, I hide myself in this forest. I ask you, John Giffard, not to put me forth."

She spoke very simply, almost like a child, but he judged that there was some unforgettable thing hidden behind those eyes of hers. He was stirred within himself because of her, and that which was born within him was not mere pity.

"I shall not put you forth," he said, "and yet——"

She echoed him: "And yet?"

"The forest is not always merciful. There is a certain lord here, Fulk de Corbil, who holds the right of hunting the King's deer for three days each year. There is no king now but Roger Mortimer, and this Fulk de Corbil is his man. Well, he has chosen to hunt in the forest this day week, and he is a wanton, mischievous beast, and no cruel thing comes amiss to him."

She answered very quietly.

"I have heard of Fulk de Corbil. But why should he harm a leper?"

"Because there is no reason in a thing is reason enough for Fulk de Corbil. He would set his dogs on you if the whim took him. I would bid you lie hidden that day."

"That would be easy. Over yonder is a great oak with a hollow eaten out of its trunk. It would serve me as a castle."

He had one more question to ask her.

"Why do you carry that crossbow with you?"

"That is part of my vow. It is not for the deer; I swear that to you."

And he did not press her further.

"I trust you as to that. As for this disguise of yours——"

"It is a leper who walks the woods, John Giffard. Keep my secret. I, too, trust you with something."

She seemed to have said her say, and stood there waiting for him to go. Her eyes grew shy of his, for he was good to look upon, straight-lipped and clean, and she knew, as a woman knows, that the man in him had been stirred by the woman in her.

"Mistress Judith, we shall meet again."

"Perhaps—perhaps not. Whatever befalls, I thank you, Master Giffard."

A strong man may go for years without the great adventure of life befalling him. He may have cantered through his boyish escapades, gone love-sick for a week, or passed some face that seemed fair to him and then forgotten it. But when the real flare comes, it is fire of another sort, and the bigger the man's heart, the bigger the furnace.

So it befell with John Giffard. Gilimer Pool, with its brown woodland water, became a lure to him, and he saw it agleam with the glory of a woman's hair. Whence had she come? What was this mysterious tow of hers? What shadowy sorrow lay hid in the deeps of her eyes?

The deer had no lord those days. The forest held a thing that was more wonderful, more to be desired. John Giffard would be out before dawn, following the brown glimmer of the Gilimer Brook where it ran under the oaks and beeches of the Black Vale. He was an unseen warden, an invisible pilgrim, for his love was a watching and a great silence. He never showed himself to Judith Pendrell, but he was there along the yews, seeing but unseen.

And here almost daily he saw a strange thing. There was a tall beech tree at one end of the glade, and Judith would take her crossbow and shoot bolt after bolt across the pool at the grey trunk of this beech tree. The intent, purposeful thoroughness of her shooting was unforgettable. When she had shot some dozen bolts, she would walk round the pool to the beech tree, examine the trunk and the hits that she had made. Very few shots went astray; she was in dead earnest about something, and her shooting with the crossbow kept pace with her purpose. He would watch her spending an hour working the bolts out of the bark of the beech tree with her knife.

"This is not done for pleasure," he said to himself.

The mystery took on a new meaning.

Giffard had watched and held aloof, but, on the day before Fulk de Corbil's hunting, he showed himself by Gilimer Pool. Judith was sitting on a pile of bracken that she had cut, staring at the water of the pool like one who sees ghosts. Her cowl was over her head, but her face was uncovered.

Giffard had warned her that it was he who was moving through the yews.

"Mistress Judith, a friend!"

It was no mere fancy of his that her eyes were glad of his coming. She had been alone so much, with nothing but her own thoughts to brood over, that she was hungry for the sight of a human face, and perhaps her loneliness and the sinister days that lay before her made her yearn for the things that she had cast away out of her life.

Giffard came through the bracken towards her, and her very first glimpse of his face was a revelation. She looked at him, not a little astonished within herself, for in a week this man had changed from a mere stranger into a lover, without having seen her again, as she thought, since he had surprised her by the pool.

"Still here?"

He stood looking down at her, and his eyes made her afraid because they beckoned her away from the fate that she had chosen.

"Yes, I am still here."

He threw himself down a bow's length from her, propping himself on one elbow.

"I came to tell you that Fulk de Corbil hunts to-morrow."

She had to stiffen herself against a self-betrayal, for that name was like the cut of a whip to her.

"I will shut myself in my castle."

"There is the Great Lodge. You will be safer there."

"You forget what I pretend to be."

"There is a shed built of faggots in my orchard. A leper would do no harm there."

Persuade her he could not; there was always the mystery of that vow. And in his desire to persuade her, the lover in him broke loose, almost without his realising it; but Judith knew it, and his love made her afraid. For the faint echo in her own heart grew suddenly to a strangely pleading cry. Love and life held out their hands to her, and she had taught herself to look for death.

Yet, before he left her, this love of his became a conscious and rational thing that would not consent to be silenced.

"Am I to know nothing?"

Her eyes tried to rebuff him, and they failed.

"You have but to think of my bell and my leper's frock. They warn friends away."

"What danger is there?"

"That is a thing I may not tell you."

"But if I should vow to discover it?"

She turned to him with sudden passion.

"Man, man, is there no sanctuary for me even here? Say no more, I charge you, or I shall hate you from the deeps of my heart!"

When he left her that day, his love was the greater because of her striving to escape it. So great was it that he could forgive her her silence, and swear to himself that she should learn to trust him even with the truth.

Giffard was nearer to it than he guessed.

The forest was to be Fulk de Corbil's for one whole day, and Giffard forgot the deer in thinking of Judith Pendrell. He was down among the yews by Gilimer Pool soon after dawn, and the first sound that he heard was the sound of the leper bell.

He hid himself, and the sound of the bell came nearer, passed him, and went on, as though Judith were following the Gilimer Brook. She was walking right away from the hollow oak that was to have served her as her castle, and he was puzzled to know why she was astir so early, and, being puzzled, he followed her.

He soon sighted the grey figure moving among the trees, and he kept Judith in view, shadowing her through the forest, and wondering as he went. For she took the Gilimer Brook as her guide, and the brook would lead her through the Black Vale, across White Hart Walk to High Woods and Bratley Heath, where Fulk de Corbil would begin his hunting. They would start a stag in High Woods and hunt him across Bratley Heath, for Mat of the Moor w-as to serve Fulk de Corbil for the day, and the course of Bratley Heath was Mat's favourite chase.

An hour later John Giffard was lying full length in the bracken, watching Judith, who had posted herself behind the trunk of a beech tree. The green gloom of the woods ended before them in a great sunlit glade, whose southern end showed the blue horizon over Bratley Heath. Giffard kept very still. He had seen Judith take the stock and the bow of her crossbow from under her grey habit, fit them together, and take a trial shot at a tree on the far side of the glade. He was astonished, too, at the place she had chosen, for only a forester's cunning could have told her that a stag nearly always took his course along this glade when hunted over Bratley Heath.

What was in her mind? Was this a mere piece of adventure, or had that bow of hers some grim purpose to serve?

From the distance came the tongueing of dogs. The sound drew nearer and nearer, and Guard's eyes never left Judith's figure. He had brought his own bow with him, and he strung it, ready. There was the sound ot some big thing galloping, and Giffard saw a hart royal come up the glade and pass the tree where Judith lay hidden. She let the hart go by and loosed no bolt at it.

Giffard rose to his knees. If she had let the hart go by, was she waiting for the man who hunted it?

The hounds appeared, running in a bunch, with a fierce old dog leading them. They passed, and the noise of their padding feet was followed by the galloping of a horse. Giffard knew Fulk de Corbil's ways. He was a mad rider, and the cronies of his who hunted with him were content to be left behind.

Giffard saw Judith move from behind the trunk of the tree. A big roan horse was coming along at a gallop, and the man who rode it was Fulk de Corbil. His green surcoat was embroidered with crimson falcons, and his hunting cap was of crimson velvet. A silver horn was slung over one shoulder, and he carried a bow in his right hand.

Giffard sprang up. He heard the burr of a bowstring, and saw Fulk de Corbil sway in the saddle; but he recovered himself, reined his horse in, and threw rapid glances into the wood.

Judith was rebending her bow. She went forward into the open, laid a bolt on the string, and took a steady aim at the man on the roan horse.

The second bolt struck him full in the flank, but Fulk de Corbil had a chain mail shirt under his surcoat. He sighted Judith, stuck the spurs into his horse, and rode straight at her, throwing his bow aside and drawing the short sword that he wore.

Giffard saw her stand stock still, as though astonished that both her bolts had failed. She did not try to re-string her bow, but seemed to wait there helplessly for Fulk de Corbil's horse to trample on her.

Giffard shouted—

"Run—run!"

She heard him, and the will to live seemed to revive in her. She turned and fled back into the wood; but Fulk de Corbil rode in after her, for the great trees stood well apart, like the pillars of a church.

Giffard was fitting an arrow to his bow. Fulk de Corbil's rage had galloped by without seeing him, and he cursed as he rode.

Giffard saw Judith stumble and fall. Fulk de Corbil was about to ride right over her, when Giffard sent an arrow into the horse's shoulder. The horse swerved, reared, and pitched Fulk de Corbil out of the saddle.

He was unhurt, and had kept his grip of the short sword. Judith had scrambled to her feet, but Fulk de Corbil was too quick for her. His fury centred itself on the figure in grey, and he caught her by the hood, dragging it back as she tried to escape.

Giffard was running through the bracken. He had thrown down his bow and drawn his short sword. He saw Fulk de Corbil's blade raised, heard him give a strange cry, and stand holding the leper by the hood. The mask of linen had slipped from Judith's face. She had twisted herself round, and her eyes met Fulk de Corbil's eyes.

"Traitor, murderer, strike!"

"Judith Pendrell! You she-cat!"

"Strike! But for that mail shirt of yours, I should have been revenged!"

A dozen galloping horses went up the glade, but their riders saw nothing of what was happening in the wood, for the glade curved to the west, and they believed Fulk de Corbil to be ahead of them.

"You she-devil!"

He twisted one hand into her hair, held her at arm's length, and pointed his sword. But John Giffard was on him. He struck up Fulk de Corbil's sword and caught him by the throat.

"Loose your hold!"

Giffard flung him back, but Fulk de Corbil was a wild beast when his rage was up. Judith had slipped away, but he rushed round Giffard and sprang after her, and aimed a blow at her with his sword. It missed, but that blow turned Giffard into a madman.

In a minute Fulk de Corbil lay dead at his feet, and he and Judith were staring at the dead man and at each other.

Then she flung out her hands and spoke in a strange, awed voice.

"What have you done, what have you done, for my sake? This man was Roger Mortimer's creature, and Mortimer will not spare you."

She stood rigid, staring at the dead man.

"Of course, of course"—and her eyes flashed—"it was I who slew him, John Giffard, and I shall say that it was I who slew him. No one need ever know. I came here to slay him, because he betrayed my father—betrayed him to his death. You see, it was really I who slew him. I shall swear that!"

Giffard looked at her steadily.

"Now I know the truth. But, by my soul, you shall swear nothing of the kind! This is in my hands."

He took Fulk de Corbil by the heels, dragged the body further into the wood, and left it lying in the tall bracken. The dead man's sword and bow he thrust into a hollow tree. Fulk de Corbil's horse had stopped, and, standing at the edge of the glade, was turning its head and trying to lick the place where Giffard's arrow had wounded it in the shoulder.

Giffard went towards the horse, calling him softly.

"Poor fellow, poor old fellow!"

The horse consented to accept him as a friend. The arrow had struck slantwise and had not gone deep. Giffard plucked it out with one jerk of the hand.

"Softly, softly, old fellow!"

The horse started, stood quivering, but did not break away.

"Gallop home now, my friend. They can make what they can of the riddle."

He walked back to Judith, and she saw by his eyes that no words of hers would move him.

"Come!"

She did not move.

"Shall I give myself up?"

He caught her by the wrist, and his eyes looked into hers.

"Speak a word to anyone, and I shall tell the truth—that it was I who killed Fulk de Corbil. For a week I have played the spy; I watched you shoot with that crossbow of yours, and I wondered."

Her wide eyes questioned him, and yet she knew why he had watched over her in the forest.

"My doom is my own doom, John Giffard. Why should I lay it on any man?"

"Because a man's love is strong enough to bear heavier things than that."

He still held her by the wrist, and they began to walk through the forest, John Giffard, alert and restless, stopping now and again to listen. Once they heard the distant note of a horn, but hart, hounds, and horsemen were lost in the deeps of the Black Yale.

Judith was silent. She glanced at Giffard's face as he strode beside her; his grip on her wrist never relaxed.

"Where are you taking me?" she asked him.

"To the Great Lodge."

"Your home?"

"My home."

"And what then? Have I no choice?"

He let go of her wrist suddenly.

"Pardon! I had almost forgotten that."

She managed to smile at him.

"But I came here to slay a man."

"It was I who slew him for you. That dog should have been drowned at birth."

They walked on a while in silence. Her face had softened; a kind of yearning look came into her eyes. She glanced at John Giffard, and all her loneliness cried out to him.

"John!"

He turned his head sharply.

"If I come, I shall bring you danger, perhaps sorrow."

"I am strong enough to put them out of my own house."

They walked on again in silence. Then he began to speak.

"Never had I set eyes on the mate I desired till I saw you by Gilimer Pool. Who knows the why and the wherefore? If you had had blood on your hands to-day, I should have loved you just the same. You are coming back with me to the Great Lodge. I shall shut the door and keep Death out."

Her hand came into his.

"I can hardly believe it," she said, "I, who thought life was just winter coming."

His arm went about her, but before they had gone very far, he made her stop while he cut the strap of the leper bell and threw it away into a thicket.

"Let that bide behind," he said. "There will be tongues enough to be kept quiet."

As for Fulk de Corbil, he lay there in the bracken, and after a few days no one concerned themselves to search for him, for news came that the young King's men had seized Mortimer and Queen Isabella at Nottingham, and all Fulk de Corbil's creatures took fright and fled over the sea.

Nor is it on record that Fulk de Corbil was ever found. The forest folk believed that someone had slain him in the forest, and they had hated him enough to let well alone.

But they spun many tales about John Giffard and his lady. Some said she was a lord's daughter who had fled away disguised as a leper, because some lord would have married her by force, and John Giffard had caught his mate.

Mat of the Moor would roll his head from side to side and cross himself when he told how he had once shot an arrow at John Giffard's lady, taking her for a ghost.

"Never ghost had such fine children," he would say.

And the whole forest agreed with him.