The time crept on; the moon sank towards the mountains.

“What if they do not come?” asked Wulf.

“Let us wait to think of it till dawn,” answered Godwin.

Again they walked the length of the cave and back.

“How can they come, the door being barred?” asked Wulf.

“How did Masouda come and go?” answered Godwin.  “Oh, question me no more; it is in the hand of God.”

“Look,” said Wulf, in a whisper.  “Who stand yonder at the end of the cave—­there by the dead men?”

“Their spirits, perchance,” answered Godwin, drawing his sword and leaning forward.  Then he looked, and true enough there stood two figures faintly outlined in the gloom.  They glided towards them, and now the level moonlight shone upon their white robes and gleamed in the gems they wore.

“I cannot see them,” said a voice.  “Oh, those dead soldiers—­what do they portend?”

“At least yonder stand their horses,” answered another voice.

Now the brethren guessed the truth, and, like men in a dream, stepped forward from the shadow of the wall.

“Rosamund!” they said.

“Oh Godwin! oh Wulf!” she cried in answer.  “Oh, Jesu, I thank Thee, I thank Thee—­Thee, and this brave woman!” and, casting her arms about Masouda, she kissed her on the face.

Masouda pushed her back, and said, in a voice that was almost harsh:  “It is not fitting, Princess, that your pure lips should touch the cheek of a woman of the Assassins.”

But Rosamund would not be repulsed.

“It is most fitting,” she sobbed, “that I should give you thanks who but for you must also have become ‘a woman of the Assassins,’ or an inhabitant of the House of Death.”

Then Masouda kissed her back, and, thrusting her away into the arms of Wulf, said roughly: 

“So, pilgrims Peter and John, your patron saints have brought you through so far; and, John, you fight right well.  Nay, do not stop for our story, if you wish us to live to tell it.  What!  You have the soldiers’ horses with your own?  Well done!  I did not credit you with so much wit.  Now, Sir Wulf, can you walk?  Yes; so much the better; it will save you a rough ride, for this place is steep, though not so steep as one you know of.  Now set the princess upon Flame, for no cat is surer-footed than that horse, as you may remember, Peter.  I who know the path will lead it.  John, take you the other two; Peter, do you follow last of all with Smoke, and, if they hang back, prick them with your sword.  Come, Flame, be not afraid, Flame.  Where I go, you can come,” and Masouda thrust her way through the bushes and over the edge of the cliff, talking to the snorting horse and patting its neck.

A minute more, and they were scrambling down a mountain ridge so steep that it seemed as though they must fall and be dashed to pieces at the bottom.  Yet they fell not, for, made as it had been to meet such hours of need, this road was safer than it appeared, with ridges cut in the rock at the worst places.