"Thane," said the eldest priest to me just at this time, "I pray you ride on and tell the archbishop that you have indeed found what we sought. It is but right that all should be ready against the time we get back. We are not more than a mile away from the gates, and you will have time. This is slow travelling, perforce."
Erling and I rode on with the reeve, therefore, and I thought no more of the blind man, as one may suppose, until I heard what had happened.
When the two men went back to his help, he sat again by the side of the road, hiding his face in his hands on his knees. And he was trembling.
"Friends," he said, "now I know why you go so sadly, welladay! For evil men have slain some one young and well favoured, as I learned even now, when I helped you yonder. Tell me what has befallen, I pray you, for I am afeard."
"Why," said one of the men, "we are honest folk, as our being with the good fathers may be surety. The trouble is ours to bear."
But the blind man still kept his eyes hidden, and when the other man bade him rise and come on with them he did not move.
"I know not what ails me," he said. "Even as I set my hand on him you bear yonder, there came as it were a great flash of light across my eyes, and needs must I fall away and hide them. I fear that, not you, friends. I pray you, tell me what has been wrought."
"His foes have slain a bridegroom, most cruelly," one of the men answered after a pause. "We do but bear him to Fernlea."
"What bridegroom?" he asked, in a hushed voice.
And then the pity of the thing came to him, and he wept silently. Presently he raised his head, dashing away the tears as he did so.