"Dead, my father. Red Pertolepe's men slew them this day within the green. So, when I had buried them, I took my axe and left them with God: yet shall my soul go lonely, methinks, until my time be come."
Then Friar Martin reached out his hand and laid it upon Walkyn's bowed head: and, though the hand was hard and toil-worn, the touch of it was ineffably gentle, and he spake with eyes upraised to heaven:
"O Christ of Pity, look down upon this stricken soul, be Thou his stay and comfort. Teach him, in his grief and sorrow, to pity the woes of others, that, in comforting his fellows, he may himself find comfort."
Now when the prayer was ended he turned and looked upon the others, and, beholding Beltane in his might and glittering mail, he spake, saluting him as one of rank.
"Sir Knight," said he, "do these men follow thee?"
"Aye, verily," cried the archer, "that do I in sooth—Verbum sat sapienti—good friar."
"Not so," growled Roger, "'tis but a pestilent archer that seeketh but base hire. I only am my lord's man, sworn to aid him in his vow." "I also," quoth Walkyn, "an so my lord wills?"
"So shall it be," sighed Beltane, his hand upon his throbbing brow.
"And what have ye in mind to do?"
"Forsooth," cried Giles, "to fight, good friar, manibus pedibusque."