His pace was unsteady and he staggered to and fro, yet still the bloody fragment hung at his back. At last he fell and died, and the scene of his death was before a pleasant cottage on the green hill side. Much wondered the solitary Student of the cot, as he surveyed the carcass of the gallant steed. Little did he wot from whence he sped or the cause of his flight.
Meanwhile gathering around the shapeless trunk, the men of Albarone built a pile of the branches of oaks, that had lain mouldering for years in the forest, and soon a broad bright flame arose, and it burned till the setting of the sun, when a storm gathered in the west, and heralded by thunder, and armed with lightning, it swept over the earth, and the ashes of the fratricide, mingling with the whirlwind, never more polluted the green bosom of the earth.
Thus runs the legend of the Doom of the Poisoner, thus runs the legend of the death that befel.