EBOOK VIA CRUCIS ***
Produced by Tonya Allen, Charles Franks
and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team.
[Illustration: "SO GILBERT FIRST MET THE QUEEN"]
VIA CRUCIS
A Romance of the Second Crusade
BY
F. MARION CRAWFORD
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
"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
CHAPTER I
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.
The sun was setting, and the level rays reddened the lady's golden
hair, and fired the softness of her clear blue eyes.
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