"Good friends," said he, "knowing nought of me yet were ye willing to follow my fortunes. For this do I thank ye one and all, and so shall my fortune, high or low, be thine, henceforth. To-day is Ivo Duke, and I thy companion-in-arms, no more, no less—this, I pray you all, remember."
So saying, Beltane sheathed his sword and beholding Friar Martin on his knees beside that muffled figure, he knelt also, and the three with him. Thereafter at a sign from the friar, Beltane stooped and raised this slender, shrouded figure in his arms and reverently bore it out into the shadows.
And there, all in the tender radiance of the moon, they buried her whose name they never knew, and stood a while in silence. Then, pointing to the new-turned earth, Friar Martin spake soft-voiced:
"Lo, here—in but a little time, wild flowers shall bloom above her— yet none purer or sweeter than she! In a little shall the grass be green again, and she sleep here forgot by all—save God! And God, my brothers, is a gentle God and very pitiful—so now do we leave her in God's abiding care."
And presently they turned, soft-footed, and went upon their way leaving the place to solitude.
But from the vault of heaven the stars looked down upon that lonely grave like the watching eyes of holy angels.
CHAPTER XII
WHICH TELLS HOW DUKE IVO'S GREAT GALLOWS CEASED TO BE
Scarce a mile without the walls of the fair city of Belsaye my lord Duke had builded him a great gallows, had set it high upon a hill for all the world to see; from whose lofty cross-beams five score rogues had hanged ere now, had writhed and kicked their lives away and rotted there in company, that all the world might know how potent was the anger of my lord Duke Ivo.
Day in, day out, from rosy morn till dewy eve, it frowned upon Belsaye, a thing of doom whose grim sight should warn rebellious townsfolk to dutiful submission; by night it loomed, a dim-seen, brooding horror, whose loathsome reek should mind them how all rogues must end that dared lift hand or voice against my lord Duke, or those proud barons, lords, and knights who, by his pleasure, held their fiefs with rights of justice, the high, the middle and the low.