Roger and Alice live alone with their mother in a tiny cottage. Their father, a knight, left five years earlier to fight in the Crusades and never returned. Roger and Alice are sent by their mother, who is sick and feverish, on a journey to find an uncle they did not know they had. They take with them their mother's lute. "Show him the eagle carved on the back," she tells her children. "Ask him to come quickly. Quickly!"

On their journey they are captured by two ruffians and locked in an old tower. Knowing that at least one of them must escape, for their mother's sake, Roger and Alice come up with a plan. Alice, the better climber of the two, climbs up the tower to a high window and squeezes through. Now she journeys alone, and somehow must find her uncle and persuade him to help. Unfortunately, she no longer has the lute to prove she is telling the truth, but with courage and cunning she is able to convince her uncle and save her brother. Then, together with their uncle, they return home to their mother.