The Forest Lovers

"You are a little beauty, my dear," she thought to herself. "Countess

or bastard, you are a little beauty. And there is countess in your

blood somewhere, I'll take an oath. Hands and feet, neck and head,

tell the story. There was love and a young countess and a hot-brained

troubadour went to the making of you, my little lady. A ditch-full of

witches could not bring such tokens to a villein. Galors, my dear

friend, if I owed nothing to Master le Gai, I doubt if I should help

you to this. 'Tis too much, my friend, with an earldom. She needs no

crown, pardieu!"

She knew her own crown had toppled, and grew a little bleak as she

thought of it. There was no earldom for her to fall back upon. She

looked older when off her guard. But she had determined to be loyal to

the one friend she had ever had. The worst woman in the world can do

that much. Therefore, when Isoult woke up she found herself made much

of. The sun of her day-dreaming rose again and shone full upon her. By

the end of the day they had reached Tortsentier. Isoult was fast in a

prison that had no look of a prison, where Galors was mending his

throat in an upper chamber.

Maulfry came and sat on the foot of his bed. Galors, strapped and

bandaged till he looked like a mewed owl in a bush, turned his chalk

face to her with inquiry shooting out of his eyes. He had grown a

spiky black beard, from which he plucked hairs all day, thinking and

scheming.

"Well," was all he said.

Maulfry nodded. "The story is true. She has the feet and hands. She is

a little beauty. You have only to shut the hole in your neck."

Galors swore. "Let God judge whether that damned acrobat shall pay for

his writhing! But the other shall be my first business. So she is

here--you have seen her? What do you think of her?"

"I have told you."

The man's appetite grew as it fed upon Maulfry's praise of his taste.

"Ah--ah! Dame, I'm a man of taste--eh?"

Maulfry said nothing. Galors changed the note.

"How shall I thank you, my dear one?" he asked her.

"Ah," said she, "I shall need what you can spare before long."

Then she left him.