Chapter 17 - Page 2

"Hold !" he cried, and, turning directly to Roger de Leybourn, "I have no quarrel with thee, My Lord, but again I come for a guest within thy halls. Methinks thou hast as bad taste in whom thou entertains as didst thy fair lady."

"Who be ye, that thus rudely breaks in upon the peace of my castle, and makes bold to insult my guests ?" demanded Roger de Leybourn.

"Who be I ! If you wait, you shall see my mark upon the forehead of yon grinning baboon," replied the outlaw, pointing a mailed finger at one who had been seated close to De Leybourn.

All eyes turned in the direction that the rigid finger of the outlaw indicated, and there indeed was a fearful apparition of a man. With livid face he stood, leaning for support against the table; his craven knees wabbling beneath his fat carcass; while his lips were drawn apart against his yellow teeth in a horrid grimace of awful fear.

"If you recognize me not, Sir Roger," said Norman of Torn, drily, "it is evident that your honored guest hath a better memory."

At last the fear-struck man found his tongue, and, though his eyes never left the menacing figure of the grim, iron-clad outlaw, he addressed the master of Leybourn; shrieking in a high, awe-emasculated falsetto:

"Seize him ! Kill him ! Set your men upon him ! Do you wish to live another moment, draw and defend yourselves for he be the Devil of Torn, and there be a great price upon his head.

"Oh, save me, save me ! for he has come to kill me," he ended in a pitiful wail.

The Devil of Torn ! How that name froze the hearts of the assembled guests.

The Devil of Torn ! Slowly the men standing there at the board of Sir Roger de Leybourn grasped the full purport of that awful name.

Tense silence for a moment held the room in the stillness of a sepulchre, and then a woman shrieked, and fell prone across the table. She had seen the mark of the Devil of Torn upon the dead brow of her mate.

And then Roger de Leybourn spoke:

"Norman of Torn, but once before have you entered within the walls of Leybourn, and then you did, in the service of another, a great service for the house of Leybourn; and you stayed the night, an honored guest. But a moment since, you said that you had no quarrel with me. Then why be you here ? Speak ! Shall it be as a friend or an enemy that the master of Leybourn greets Norman of Torn; shall it be with outstretched hand or naked sword ?"

"I come for this man, whom you may all see has good reason to fear me. And when I go, I take part of him with me. I be in a great hurry, so I would prefer to take my great and good friend, Peter of Colfax, without interference; but, if you wish it otherwise; we be a score strong within your walls, and nigh a thousand lie without. What say you, My Lord ?"

"Your grievance against Peter of Colfax must be a mighty one, that you search him out