"O madam--my lady!" cried her companion, "Look, yonder be lights--lanthorns aflare on the road. 'Tis Gregory as I do think, with folk come to seek for us. Shall we go meet them?"
"Nay wait, child--first let us be sure!" So side by side we stood all three amid the dripping trees, watching the tossing lights that grew ever nearer until we might hear the voices of those that bare them, raised, ever and anon, in confused shouting.
"Aye, 'tis Gregory!" sighed my lady after some while. "He hath raised the village and we are safe--"
"Hark!" cried I, starting forward. "What name do they cry upon?"
"Mine, sir!"
"Oho, my lady!" roared the hoarse chorus. "Oho, my Lady Joan--my Lady Brandon--Brandon--Brandon!"
"Brandon!" cried I, choking upon the word.
"Indeed, sir--I am the Lady Joan Brandon of Shene Manor, and so long as life be mine needs must I bear within my grateful heart the memory of--"
But, waiting for no more, I turned and sprang away into the denser gloom of the wood. And ever as I went, crashing and stumbling through the underbrush, above the noise of my headlong flight rang the hated name of the enemy I had journeyed so far to kill--"Brandon! Brandon! Brandon!"