“You must do as you will, Sir Rudolph,” the girl said with dignity.  “I believe not your tale.  You sought before, in person, to carry me off, but failed, and you have now employed other means to do so.  The tale of your conduct to Dame Editha has reached my ears, and I hold you a foresworn knight and a dishonored man, and as such I would rather die than become your wife, although as yet I am but a child, and have no need to talk of weddings for years to come.”

“We need not parley here,” the knight said coldly.  “We shall have plenty of time when at my castle.”

The litter was now lifted, placed between two horses, and proceeded rapidly on its journey.  Although the hope was but faint, yet until the gates of the castle closed upon them the Lady Margaret still hoped that rescue might reach her.  But the secret had been too well kept, and it was not until the following day that the man who had been placed in a cottage near the convent arrived in all haste in the forest, to say that it was only in the morning that he had learned that the convent had been broken open by men disguised as archers, and the Lady Margaret carried off.

Four days elapsed before Sir Rudolph presented himself before the girl he had captured.  So fearfully was his face bruised and disfigured by the blow from the mailed hand of Cuthbert three weeks before, that he did not wish to appear before her under such unfavorable circumstances, and the captive passed the day gazing from her casement in one of the rooms in the upper part of the keep, toward the forest whence she hoped rescue would come.

Within the forest hot discussions were going on as to the best course to pursue.  An open attack was out of the question, especially as upon the day following the arrival there of Lady Margaret three hundred more mercenaries had marched in from Worcester, so that the garrison was now raised to five hundred men.

“Is there no way,” Cnut exclaimed furiously, “by which we might creep into this den, since we cannot burst into it openly?”

“There is a way from the castle,” Cuthbert said, “for my dear lord told me of it one day when we were riding together in the Holy Land.  He said then that it might be that he should never return, and that it were well that I should know of the existence of this passage, which few besides the earl himself knew of.  It is approached by a very heavy slab of stone in the great hall.  This is bolted down, and as it stands under the great table passes unnoticed, and appears part of the ordinary floor.  He told me the method in which, by touching a spring, the bolts were withdrawn and the stone could be raised.  Thence a passage a quarter of a mile long leads to the little chapel standing in the hollow, and which, being hidden among the trees, would be unobserved by any party besieging the castle.  This of course was contrived in order that the garrison, or any messenger thereof, might make an exit in case of siege.”