The door was flung wide. "Welcome, all Waynes who come in peace," cried Red Ratcliffe from the threshold.
"We come to secure peace," said Wayne, and turned in the darkness of the courtyard and whispered, "kill."
The hall was aglow with light as they entered. Candles stood in all the sconces of the walls, on the mantel-shelf, on the great dining-table which was pushed close against the outer wall; and, at the head and foot of the Lean Man's bier, a double row of flames shone yellow on the burial-trappings. Over the mantel were the rude letters of the Ratcliffe motto, We strike, we kill; and Wayne of Marsh smiled as his eyes fell on the device which he and his had ridden hither to disprove.
Red Ratcliffe caught the direction of his glance, and touched him lightly on the shoulder. "'Tis but an outworn saying, yond," he cried. "We neither strike nor kill, now that the dead has bequeathed us fairer days."
He beckoned toward the bier, and Wayne and all his folk drew round it in a ring, looking down upon the closed eyes and wax-white face of their old enemy. Until now they had doubted whether the Lean Man were really dead; but doubts vanished as they saw the still look of him and marked how death had lent its own nobility to the scarred weasel-face.
"His last prayer was for an end to our long feud," said Red Ratcliffe, smooth and grave.
"Ay, was it—and he wept that he had not lived to see us friends," cried one of his fellows.
Shameless Wayne kept his eyes on the dead man, for fear his scorn of all this honeyed speech should show too soon; and he thought, as Red Ratcliffe spoke, that a tremour like the first waking of a smile ran up from the cloth that bound the Lean Man's jaws. But he could not tell; the candle-flames were slanting now in the wind that rustled through the open door, and the fantastic shadows thrown by them across the bier might trick the keenest sight.
"'Twas wondrous how quiet an end he had—the old hate clean forgotten," went on Red Ratcliffe.
"May all his kinsfolk have as quiet an end," said Wayne, and sighed impatiently, wondering when the signal for the onset would free him from all this give-and-take of idle talk.