“The Crane pecked me,” he said. “He had a stout bill, if a black heart.”
Ivo wept aloud, being pitiful as he was brave. He would have scoured the country for a priest.
“Farewell, old comrade,” he sobbed. “Give greeting to Odo in Paradise, and keep a place for me by your side. I will nourish your son, as if he had been that one of my own whom Heaven has denied me. Tarry a little, dear heart, and the Priest of Glede will be here to shrive you.”
Through the thicket there crawled a mighty figure, his yellow hair dabbled in blood, and his breath labouring like wind in a threshing-floor. He lay down by Jehan's side, and with a last effort kissed him on the lips.
“Priest!” cried the dying Aelward. “What need is there of priest to help us two English on our way to God?”
CHAPTER 3. THE WIFE OF FLANDERS
From the bed set high on a dais came eerie spasms of laughter, a harsh cackle like fowls at feeding time.
“Is that the last of them, Anton?” said a voice.
A little serving-man with an apple-hued face bowed in reply. He bowed with difficulty, for in his arms he held a huge grey cat, which still mewed with the excitement of the chase. Rats had been turned loose on the floor, and it had accounted for them to the accompaniment of a shrill urging from the bed. Now the sport was over, and the domestics who had crowded round the door to see it had slipped away, leaving only Anton and the cat.