“You have killed him!”
“And buried him, cheating the priests.”
“Villain!” cried Hereward, seizing him.
“Take your hands off my throat, master. He was only my father.”
Hereward stood shocked and puzzled. After all, the man was “No-man’s-man,” and would not be missed; and Martin Lightfoot, letting alone his madness, was as a third hand and foot to him all day long.
So all he said was, “I hope you have buried him well and safely?”
“You may walk your bloodhound over his grave, to-morrow, without finding him.”
And where he lay, Hereward never knew. But from that night Martin got a trick of stroking and patting his little axe, and talking to it as if it had been alive.