But if by any unhoped-for chance Margaret and Maud were left behind at Machecoul, it would at least be a more feasible enterprise to attack the fortress during the absence of its master and his men.

Alone among the three Scots Malise faced their predicament with some philosophy.  Sholto ate his heart out with uncertainty as to the fate of his sweetheart.  The Lord James chafed at the compulsory confinement and at the consistent ill success which had pursued them.  But Malise, unwearied of limb and ironic of mood as ever, fished upon the tidal flats for brown-spotted flounders and at the rocky points for white fish, often remaining at his task till far into the night.  He constructed snares with a mechanical ingenuity in advance of his age.  And what was worth more to the company than any material help, he kept up the spirits of Sholto and of Lord James Douglas both by his brave heart and merry speech, and still more by constantly finding them something to do.

At the hour of even, one day after they had been a fortnight in the country of Retz, the three Scots were sitting moodily on a little hillock which concealed the entrance to their cave.  The forest lay behind them, an impenetrable wall of dense undergrowth crowned along the distant horizon by the solemn domes of green stone pines.  It circumvented them on all sides, save only in front, where, through several beaker-shaped breaks in the high sand dunes they could catch a glimpse of the sea.  The Atlantic appeared to fill these clefts half full, like Venice goblets out of which the purple wine has been partially drained.  To right and left the pines grew scantier, so that the rays of the sunset shone red as molten metal upon their stems and made a network of alternate gold and black behind them.

The three sat thus a long time without speech, only looking up from their tasks to let their eyes rest wistfully for a moment upon the deep and changeful amethyst of the sea, and then with a light sigh going back to the cleaning of their armoury or the shaping of a long bow.

It chanced that for several minutes no sound was heard except those connected with their labour, the low whistle with which the Lord James accompanied his polishing, the wisp-wisp of Malise’s arms as he sewed the double thread back and forth through a rent in his leathern jack, and the rasp of Sholto’s file as he carved out the finials of the bow, the notched grooves wherein the string was to lie so easily and yet so firmly.

Thus they continued to work, absorbed, each of them in the sadness of his own thought, till suddenly a shadow seemed to strike between them and the red light of the western sky.  They looked up, and before them, as it were ascending out of the very glow of sunset, they saw a woman on a white palfrey approaching them by the way of the sea.

So suddenly did she appear that the Lord James uttered a low cry of wonder, while Malise the practical reached for his sword.  But Sholto had seen this vision twice already, and knew their visitor for the Lady Sybilla.