CHAPTER IX THE LEPERS
The scene was the bank of a large desolate pond or small lake in Northamptonshire. It was on high table-land, for the distant country might be seen through openings in the pine-trees on every side: here and there a church tower, here and there a castle or embattled dwelling; here and there a poverty-stricken assemblage of huts, clustering together for protection. In the south extended the valley of the Cherwell, towards the distant Thames; on the west the high table-land of North Oxfordshire sank down into the valley of the Avon and Severn.
It was a cold windy autumnal morning, the ground yet crisp from an early frost, the leaves hung shivering on the trees, waiting for the first bleak blast of the winter wind to fetch them down to rot with their fellows.
On the edge of a pond stood two youths of some fifteen and thirteen years. They had divested themselves of their upper garments—thick warm tunics—and gazed into the water, here deep, dark, and slimy. There was a look of fixed resolution, combined with hopeless despair, in their faces, which marked the would-be suicides.
They raised their pale faces, their eyes swollen with tears, to heaven.
"O God," said the elder one, "and ye, ye Saints—if Saints there be—take the life I can bear no longer: better trust to your mercies than those of man—better Purgatory, nay, Hell, than earth. Come, Richard, the rope!"
The younger one was pale as death, but as resolved as the elder. He took up a rope, which he had thrown upon the grass, and gave it mechanically, with hands that yet trembled, to his brother.
"One kiss, Evroult—the last!"