Via Crucis: A Romance of the Second Crusade

Produced by Tonya Allen, Charles Franks and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team.
A Romance of the Second Crusade
So Gilbert first met the Queen
Perhaps that is one reason why I like you
Crosses! Give us Crosses!
Beatrix and Gilbert
He … held, while earth and sky whirled with him
The Knighting of Gilbert
For a space Gilbert answered nothing
The Way of the Cross
The sun was setting on the fifth day of May, in the year of our Lord's grace eleven hundred and forty-five. In the little garden between the outer wall of the manor and the moat of Stoke Regis Manor, a lady slowly walked along the narrow path between high rose bushes trained upon the masonry, and a low flower-bed, divided into many little squares, planted alternately with flowers and sweet herbs on one side, and bordered with budding violets on the other. From the line where the flowers ended, spiked rushes grew in sharp disorder to the edge of the deep green water in the moat. Beyond the water stretched the close-cropped sward; then came great oak trees, shadowy still in their spring foliage; and then, corn-land and meadow-land, in long, green waves of rising tilth and pasture, as far as a man could see.