Adventure Magazine Cover, August 18, 1921 — page 25: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

Murkwood Spears him, as he was departing from your hos- pitality!” | ‘Ave, aye! Well said, Robin o’ Ware. Fling it in his face, man! He can but kill us!” The prisoners, strained to the breaking- point, burst into sharp shouts of approval. The glowing eyes flickered at them. “Ye say I slew him?” he said softly. ““Aye, aye! Whoelse? He was on your land.” Sir Giles was silent, till his silence grated on their raw nerves. Bold, lawless men, who all their lives expected no end but a hangman’s noose, they had no fear of death. They dared say anything now. It was a relief to shout, to curse, to defy those eyes that had held them under a spell so long. “Then—as this man says whom ye call Robin o’ Ware—ye serve Richard de Mon- repaire?”’ Now, too late, they saw that the eyes had trapped them. It was their duty, the command imposed upon them, never to re- veal whose men they were. There was not one of them whom the Rotten Reiver had not saved from a deserved death or sheltered from the law. They were his bravos, his thieves, spies and assassins, hired at the highest price a man can receive—life itself. It was his will that none should know he paid them; if they were seized, their duty was to declare themselves the masterless outlaws they seemed. Never had one of them revealed the name of the lord whose service brought him to prison or gallows— never until now, when the strength of Gislac’s will had broken down their silence. They strove now, too late, to hide what they had revealed, behind a renewed sullen- ness. “If I slew Lord Geoffrey and not ye, then ye are innocent men who came seeking his body? Is it not so?” Silence. “But how did ye know I slew him? What proof can ye bring your master, even if I let you go?” Robin o’ Ware snarled like a beast that gloats over its kill. ‘Let us go?” he sneered. » “Why not, see- ing that seven of us are already free? There were two and twenty of us, and ye slew seven. There be but eight here in your hands. Long ere now the rest have sped to Monrepaire with word of the fray. 19 Even before that, Red Odo spurred to the castle, having found Lord Geoffrey’s body by the willows. “Hang us if ye will! Little good will it do you or any in your house. Sir Richard may not save us, but he always avenges. We shall not be cold before his lances will hedge you round with a wall of steel. Look to your walls, that they be stout, mur- derer!”’ “Tt was Odo, then, who bade you come for the body?” “Who else? Have done. Hang us, that we may be quit of your questions!” Gislac pondered a moment; then: “Joseph,” he said, “lead these men out by the postern, unbind them and set them free. Then fetch in the girl.” The prisoners turned incredulous faces towaré him. They knew Norman mercy too well to believe that he would spare them. This was another trick, another ordeal like that they had just been through. But this time they would not survive. He would tempt them with freedom, only to send death upon them in some terrible form. They did not know de Gislac always kept his word; they would not know it till they crossed the Sollett and looked back to the menacing tower, to see no horseman in pursuit, no spearman on their heels. WHEN a single man-at-arms led in Arlotta, unbound and _ shaking . with fear, the place was empty save for him who clutched her shoulder. Empty, she thought, till she saw those prob- ing eyes staring at her out of the gloom. Her heart turned to ice; she did not need to hear the cold voice to know whose eyes they were. They sank into her soul, pierced her with terror, and yet they held , her so fast that she could not find the relief of fainting or hysteria. She was no outlaw of the wood. She dared not resist or deny. “Thou didst not know they would kill him,” the voice murmured. She could scarce hear it. But she recog- nized her own words, uttered in the first horror of the night, when she laid eyes on Geoffrey’s body. “Thou didst not know who would kill him?” She would have answered; but fear choked her. COmiclbook C©