"Who has dared to do this? Who has been impious enough to draw blood during the truce of God, upon the threshold of God's sacred temple?"
One of them hastened to reply:
"It was Alber of the Thorn's widow, crazy Bertha. God preserve us from such a deed, at such a time, and in such a place!"
"But could you not have prevented it?" continued the priest, eyeing the man until he quailed.
Gilbert interposed.
"They are not to blame, Father," he said; "I did not expect the attack myself, and none else could have prevented the blow."
"It bleeds much," pursued the priest, again examining the wound.
Gilbert made a step forward, but Father Omehr detained him, and reluctantly the youth allowed himself to be supported by two of the serfs of Stramen to the bed he had occupied during the night.
Margaret de Stramen, in the spirit of the age, had gone to the cell, after discovering the nature of the young man's injury, and taken from the basket she had brought some salves and stringents with which she stood ready at the door. She washed the wound and dressed it with the tenderness peculiar to woman, and received Gilbert's thanks with a slight inclination of the head. Having completed her task, she drew the priest aside, and, looking up into his face with evident emotion, said:
"Could there have been poison on the knife?"