“ The nobles had put him forward that morning as a man born to claim a boon upon the brink of battle. Fierce and virile, he bared his sword to the sun, and pointed with mailed hand to the rebel host in the valley.
"Sire, a boon for your loyal servants."
The King's face was as a mask of steel heated to white heat, ardent and pitiless. He had the spoilers of his kingdom under his heel, and was not the man to flinch at vengeance.
"Say on, Morolt, what would ye?"
"We are men, sire, and these wolves have slaughtered our kinsfolk." ”

“ We are good for twice their number, massed as we are like rocks upon a sea-shore."
"To your posts, sirs," were Fulviac's last words to them; "whether we fall or conquer, what matters it if we die like men!"
Billows of red, green, and blue, dusted with silver, Morolt and his Berserkers rolled to the charge. They had cast aside their pikes, and taken to shield and axe, such axes as had warred in the far past for the faith of Odin. Fulviac's rebels had massed their spears into a hedge of steel, and though Morolt's men came down at a run, the spear points stemmed the onrush like a wall. ”

“ The friar considered spirituality a species of magician's lanthorn for the cozening of fools.
"What quip have you for love?" said the younger man, halting by the altar rails.
Balthasar stood with poised brush.
"There is some sincerity in the emotion," he said.
"You are experienced?"
"Sire, consider my 'habit.'"
The friar's mock horror was surprising, an excellent jest that fell like a blunted bolt from the steel of a vigorous manhood. The Lord Flavian ran on.
"Shall I fence with an infidel?" he asked.
"Sire, a man may be a man without the creed of Athanasius." ”

“ The wild seemed full of death, and of the dead, as though the souls of those slaughtered in the war screamed about Fulviac's lair. The sentinels, grey figures in a sombre atmosphere, watched white-faced in the thickets. The clarions of the storm might mask the onrush of the royal chivalry.
Yeoland the Saint lay full length upon a carved settle before a dying fire. She was listening to the wind as it roared over the cliff, amid the shrill clamour of the trees. It was such an eve as when Flavian had rattled at the postern to offer her love, and a throne at Avalon. ”

“ That same evening the Lord Flavian was brought like a bale of merchandise into Fulviac's guard-room, and tumbled on a heap of straw in a corner.
They were grim men, these forest rangers, not given to pity, or the light handling of a feud. A poniard point was their pet oath, a whip of the sword the best word with an enemy. They bit their thumb nails at creation, and were not gentle in the quest of a creed. Fulviac heard their news, and commended them. They were like the ogres of the old fables; the red blood of a lusty aristocrat smelt fresh for the sword's supper. ”

“ Now the eyes of the daughter of Rual were like the eyes of a Madonna, and she stood in a circle of white lilies like the spirit of purity. Fulviac had begun to believe in her a little, to love her a little. She stood above all other women he had known. The ladies of the court were superb and comely, and marvellously kind, but they loved colour and contemned the robe of white. They were like a rich posy for a man to choose from, scarlet and gold, azure, damask or purple. You could love their bodies, but you could not trust their souls. ”

“ As for the girl Yeoland, she was more than mocked by the swift vagaries of life. Two days of mordant realism had erased from her heart the dream visions of childhood. To be declared homeless, kinless, in one day; to be bereft of liberty the next! To what end? She stared round the richly-garnished room into which Fate had thrust her, fingered the pearl-set lute, gazed at her own face in the steel mirrors. She was the same woman, yet how differently circumstanced! Fulviac's mood had not hinted at love, or at any meaner jest. ”

“ There was the dull, rhythmic onrush of many thousand feet, the hurrying, multitudinous tramp of men marching. Armour gleamed through the glooms; casque and bassinet, salade and cap of steel flowed on and on as phosphorescent ripples on a subterranean stream. Pike, glaive, gisarme shone like stubble over the forest slopes. The sullen tramp of men, the clashing clamour of arms, the blaring of a solitary clarion, such were songs of the great pine forest on that July morning.
Yeoland, rebel lady and saint, on a great white horse, rode at Fulviac's side in full armour, save for her helmet. ”

“ The people followed as by instinct, knowing the song of old. Many hundred voices gathered strenuously into the flood, the massed roar rolling through the great crypt, echoing along the galleries like the sound of some subterranean stream. It was a deep chant and a stirring, strong with the strength of the storm wind, fanatic as the sea.
The silence that fell at the end thereof was the more solemn in contrast to the thundering stanzas of the hymn. Under the flare of the torches, Fulviac stood forward to turn the task from the crucifix to the sword.
"Men of Gilderoy." ”

“ Death, like a grey wraith, stood beside his chair; the unknown, a black and unsailed sea, stretched calm and imageless beneath his feet. Life and the ambition thereof tottered and crumbled like a quaking ruin. Love quenched her torch of gold. The man saw the stars above him, heard in the silence of thought a thousand worlds surging through the infinitudes of the heavens. What then was this mortal pillar of clay, that it should grudge its dust to the womb of the world?
And ambition? He thought of Yeoland and her wounded heart; of Gambrevault and Avalon; of La Belle Forêt smoking amid its ruins. ”

“ He passed out down the cliff stairway to the forest.
An indescribable peace pervaded the woods, a supreme silence such as the shepherd on the hills knows when the stars beckon to his soul. Fulviac walked slowly and thought the more. He felt the altitude of the forest stillness as of miles of luminous, windless æther; he felt the anguishing pathos of a woman's face; he felt the strangeness of the new philosophy that appealed to his heart. Nothing is more fascinating than watching a spiritual upheaval in one's own soul; watching some great power breaking up the crust of custom and habit ”

“ A sudden gust of youth seized the man, an old strain of chivalry woke in his heart. Grizzled and gaunt, he went on his knees in front of her and held up his hands as in prayer. There was a warm light in his eyes.
"The Mother Virgin keep you, little woman. May all peril be far from your heart, all trouble far from your soul. May my arm ever ward you, my sword guard your womanhood. All the saints watch over you; may the Spirit of God abide with you in my heart."
It was a true prayer, though Fulviac stumbled up from his knees, looking much like an awkward boy. ”

“ A slim, white-faced woman she stood shivering in the doorway of the hovel. Her eyes were black and lustrous--swift, darting eyes full of dusky fire and vivid unrest. Her mouth ran a red streak, firm above her white chin. Her hair gleamed like sable steel. The world was cold about her for the moment, dead and inert as her own heart. As she stood there, fine and fragile as gossamer, the very trees seemed to weep for her with the dawning day.
Some hundred paces from the hut, a cloud of smoke mingled with the mist that hung about the blackened walls of the forest tower. ”

“ Her eyes are as the sky, her cheeks as June roses, her hair a web of gold. She is a right fair lady, and daily she sits at her broad casement, singing, and plaiting her hair into shackles of gold. She has bound the Lord Flavian of Gambrevault in a net starred with poppies, scarlet poppies of the field, so that he ever dreams dreams of scarlet, and sees visions of lips warm as wine. Daily the Lord Flavian scours the country between Avalon and the fair city of Gilderoy, till the very dust complains of his fury, and the green grass curses his horse's heels. ”

“ Before the tree burnt a fire, the draught sweeping upwards to fan the fringe of the green fir's gown. The man in the black harness took Yeoland to the seat under the tree. The boughs arched them like a canopy, and the wood fire gave a lusty heat in the gloaming.
A boy had run forward to unhelm the knight in the red cloak. Casque and sword lay on the bench of boughs and skins. The girl's glance framed for the first time the man's face. She surveyed him at her leisure under drooping lids, with a species of reticent interest that escaped boldness. ”

“ I am named Fulviac, and I am an outlaw. Let that grant you satisfaction."
Yeoland glanced over the glade, walled in with the gloom of the woods, the stream foaming in the dusk, the armed men gathered about the further fire.
"And these?" she asked.
"Are mine."
"Outcasts also?"
"Say no hard things of them; they are folk whom the world has treated scurvily; therefore they are at feud with the world. The times are out of joint, tyrannous and heavy to bear. The nobles like millstones grind the poor into pulp, tread out the life from them, that the wine of pleasure may flow into gilded chalices. ”

“ At certain rare seasons in life, virgin light floods down into the heart, as from some oriel opened in heaven. The world stands under a grander scheme of chiaroscuro; men comprehend where they once scoffed. It was thus that Yeoland rose inspired, like a spiritual Venus from a sea of dreams. As molten glass is shaped speedily into fair and exquisite device, so the red wax of her heart had taken the impress of the hour. Gilderoy had stirred her like a blazoned page of romance.
Fulviac caught the girl's half glance at him; read in measure the meaning of her mood. ”

“ He was known as Nord of the Hammer, an armourer like to a Norse Volund, burly, strong as a bear. The door was barred upon them. One of the guards plucked the cloth from the bound man's face.
In the malicious imagery of thought, Yeoland had often pictured to herself this Flavian of Gambrevault, a coarse, florid ruffian, burly and brutal, a fleshly demigod in the world of feudalism. So much for conjecture. What she beheld was a straight-lipped, clean-limbed man, slim as a cypress, supple as good steel. The face was young yet strong, the grey eyes clear and fearless. ”

“ He found Yeoland amid the pines. She had been to the forest grave and was returning towards the cliff when the man met her. She seemed whiter than was her wont, her dark eyes looking solemn and shadowy under their sweeping lashes. She seemed marvellously fair, marvellously pure and fragile, as she came towards him under the trees.
Something in Fulviac's look startled her. Women are like the sea to the cloudy moods of men, in that they catch every sun-ray and shadow. An indefinite something in the man's manner made her restless and apprehensive. ”

“ Like a pale pearl set in ebony, Yeoland the Saint had been established again in her bower of stone. The room was even as she had left it that misty summer dawn. Prayer-desk, lute, and crucifix were there, mute relics of a passionate past. How much had befallen her in those packed weeks of peril; how great a guerdon of woe had been lavished on her heart! Love was as the last streak of gold in a fading west; only the stars recalled the unwavering lamps of heaven.
The cliff-room and its relics tortured her very soul. ”

“ That woman who shall lift you to the stars; whose lips suck the sap of the world; whose bosom breathes to the eternal swoon of all sweet sounds. She shall light the lust of battle in your heart. For her your sword shall leap, your towers totter. Chivalry should lead you like a pillar of fire out of the night, a heroic god striving for a goddess."
The Lord of Avalon stood before the high altar as one transfigured. Youth leapt in him, red, glorious, and triumphant. Balthasar's tongue had set the pyre aburning. ”