"He was slain yesterday in the church--in the very church itself, at Bruges! Happily his son was absent, and his daughter is saved, at least, if you will lend us that aid which a young man; who is even now engaged in misleading our pursuers, promised in your name."

"My son!" said the fisherman. "His promise shall bind his father as if it were my own. But tell me, who are you?"

"I am Baldwin, Lord of Wavrin," replied the stranger. "But we have no time for long conferences, good fisherman. A party of assassins are triumphant in Flanders. The count is slain; his son, a youth, yet unable to recover or defend his own without aid: his daughter is here, pursued by the murderers of her father; she cannot be long concealed, and this night, this very night, I must find some method to bear her to the shores of France, so that I may place her in safety, and, as a faithful friend of my dead sovereign, obtain the means of snatching his son's inheritance from the hands of his enemies, ere their power be confirmed beyond remedy. Will you venture to bear us out to sea in your boat, and win a reward such as a fisherman can seldom gain?"

"The storm is loud," said the fisherman; "the wind is cold; and ere you reach the coast of France, that fair flower would be withered never to, revive again. You must leave her here."

"But she will be discovered and slain by the murderers of her father," replied Baldwin. "What, are you a man, and a seaman, and fear to dare the storm for such an object?"

"I fear nothing!" answered the fisherman, calmly. "But here is my son! Albert, God's benison be upon you, my boy," he added, as a young man entered the cottage, with the dark curls of his jetty hair dripping with the night rain. "Welcome back! but you come in an hour of trouble. Cast the great bar across the door, and let no one enter, while I show this stranger a refuge he knows not."

"No one shall enter living," said the young man, after returning his father's first embrace: and the fisherman taking one of the resin lights from the table, passed through the room where the fair unhappy Marguerite of Flanders lay, recovering from the swoon into which she had fallen, to a recollection of all that was painful in existence.

"Should they attempt to force the door," whispered the fisherman to his wife, "bring her quick after me, and bid Albert and Emiline follow." And striding on with the Lord of Wavrin into the room beyond, he gave his guest the light, while he advanced towards the wall which ended the building on that side. It had formed part of some old tenement, most probably a monastery, which had long ago occupied the spot, when a little town, now no longer existing, had been gathered together at the neck of the promontory on which the fort of Scarphout stood.

This one wall was all that remained of the former habitations; and against it the cottage was built; though the huge stones of which it was composed were but little in harmony with the rest of the low building. To it, however, the fisherman advanced, and placing his shoulder against one of the enormous stones, to the astonishment of the stranger it moved round upon a pivot in the wall, showing the top of a small staircase, leading down apparently into the ground. A few words sufficed to tell that that staircase led, by a passage under the narrow neck of sand-hills, to the old castle beyond; and that in that old castle was still one room habitable, though unknown to any but the fisherman himself.

"Here, then, let the lady stay," he said, "guarded, fed, and tended by my wife and children; and for you and me, let us put to sea. I will bring you safe to Boulogne, if I sleep not with you beneath the waves; and there, from the King of France, you may gain aid to re-establish rightful rule within the land."