Across the strait rose a thick smoke from the foot of the glen. Heidrek's folk were burning the wretched huts for sport. All the fisher people would have fled at their first coming.
"They are busy now," said Bertric grimly, nodding toward the signs of pillage. "They will be here next."
Now Gerda came with a little bundle, wrapped in her blue cloak. She was pale, and near to weeping as she looked on the hermits, who were coming together from their work to the black cross in the midst of their home. The old superior caught sight of me and called to me in his still voice.
"So you must fly, my son," he said. "I would that we had had more speech together. Give this to the lady who has listened to me so patiently. Now, I have bidden Fergus and Phelim to go with you. They can row, and that well, and you need help. Aye, I ken the ways of the boatwork well enough. You will make them go with you, for hardly will they obey me, now at the last."
Thereat those two brethren threw themselves at the feet of the old man, and besought him to let them bide with the rest for that crown of martyrdom which they might gain.
"No, my sons," he said sternly, and yet lovingly; "your lives may yet be of use. Ours are done. Now you shall win more by saving the lives of these friends of ours who came to us in need than by losing your own."
Then he bent toward them, and spoke rapidly in the Latin tongue, and I saw their faces change, and they rose up. Thereafter they had no more to say of staying, though at the time I could not tell what the words which wrought this change might be. Without another word they took Bertric's arms and mine and Gerda's little pack, and started for the shore, and as they went the old man smiled as if content. Then he bent toward us.
"Go, my children," he said; "you have no moment to waste longer. It has been good to speak with you."
Now I set that which he had given me in Gerda's hand. It was a little black crucifix carven of the bog oak by one of the brothers who was skilful at that work. She took it with a flushing face.
"Malcolm," she said, "tell him that we will not forget."