d Clotilde in its grasp with that announcement. These
strange folk were gentle enough with her, but never before had her
mother refused her the haven of her out-held arms. Besides, they lied.
Their eyes were shifty. She could see in their faces that they kept
something from her.

Philip, having confessed himself overnight, by candle-light, was at mass
when the pair arrived. Three days one must rot of peace, and those three
days, to be not entirely lost, he prayed for success against Charles, or
for another thing that lay close to his heart. But not for both
together, since that was not possible.

He knelt stiffly in his cold chapel and made his supplications, but he
was not too engrossed to hear the drawbridge chains and to pick up his
ears to the clatter of the grey horse.

So, having been communicated, he made short shift of what remained to
be done, and got to his feet.

The Abbot, whose offices were finished, had also heard the drawbridge
chains and let him go.

When Philip saw Clotilde he frowned and then smiled. He had sons, but no
daughter, and he would have set her on his shoulder. But she drew away
haughtily.

So Philip sat in a chair and watched her with a curious smile playing
about his lips. Surely it were enough to make him smile, that he should
play host to the wife and daughter of his cousin Charles.

Because of that, and of the thing that he had prayed for, and with a
twinkle in his eyes, Black Philip alternately watched the child, and
from a window the plain which was prepared against his cousin. And, as
he had expected, at ten o'clock in the morning came Charles and six
men-at-arms, riding like demons, and jerked up their horses at the edge
of the moat.

Philip, still with the smile under his black beard, went out to greet
them.

"Well met, cousin," he called; "you ride fast and early."

Charles eyed him with feverish eyes.

"Truce of God," he said, sulkily, from across the moat. And then: "We
seek a runaway, the child Clotilde."

"I shall make inqu

Martha Finley (1828 - 1909) was a teacher and author of numerous works, the most well known being the 28 volume Elsie Dinsmore series which was published over a span of 38 years. The daughter of Presbyterian minister Dr. James Brown Finley and his wife and cousin Maria Theresa Brown Finley, she was born on April 26th, 1828 in Chillicothe, Ohio. Finley wrote many of her books under the psodonym Martha Farquharson. She died in 1909 in Elkton, Maryland, where she moved in 1876.

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