"Nay, mother, we waste time; if thou hast not seen him, we go."
"Hast thou seen my Eadwin? He is generally here with the lark?"
Wilfred's face changed; he stammered out some evasive reply, and dashed out to join the men and hounds, who were quite at fault; they had lost the scent far below, where Etienne entered the brook, and were diligently investigating, one by one, all the tracks that led from the morass.
Etienne had heard all, and his heart smote him. From the language used, the words he had heard, he felt that this old woman must be the foster mother of his rival, and, if so, the mother of that very Eadwin he had so cruelly put to death the previous night; he quite understood Wilfred's evasive reply.
His heart smote him, and he repented of this cruelty, at least: he dreaded the moment when his preserver must learn the truth. Would she then give him up?
What, too, did Wilfred mean by his allusion to poison? Had he any grounds for such suspicion? Poison was not an unknown agent amongst the Normans. The great Duke himself had been suspected (doubtless wrongfully) of removing Conan of Brittany by its means.
But fatigue overcame him, and he slept. And during that sleep symptoms of fever began to show themselves. He began to talk in his dreams--"There goes a fire--avoid it, it is an evil spirit--shoot arrows at it. Make it tell the secret--now we shall know about the swamp. Here is a fiend throttling me--oh, its awful eyes, they blaze like two marsh fires. No, tie him to the wall; he shall tell the truth or die. What are you giving me to drink?--it is blood, blood. You have poisoned me--I burn, burn--my veins are full of boiling lead--my heart a boiling cauldron. See, there are the marsh fiends--they are carrying away Louis and Pierre--their tails are as whips--ah, an arrow through each of their arms will stop them. Where is my armour?--a hunting dress won't stop their darts, or save one from their claws. Oh, father, help me--save me from the goblins."
In this incoherent way he talked for hours, and the old dame shuddered as he confused the real tragedy of the previous night with imaginary terrors. Oh, how awful were his ravings to her, when at last she learned the truth. Yet in those very ravings he showed that remorse was at his heart.
She wept as she sat by his bed--wept over the son he had slain. The details of that tragedy were, however, studiously concealed from her by Wilfred's sedulous care; yet she knew Etienne had been the leader of the hostile troop, in conflict with whom she supposed her Eadwin to have fallen in fair open fight; for she was led to understand he had been slain in the terrific struggle in the house.
"The only son of his mother, and she was a widow."