'My father—oh, they have slain my father!' she cried.
We that were within also rushed out by the front door, forgetting all else, and filled with dread of what we might see.
The dawn was coming red from the east, and there, in the first flush of it, lay Black Peter, plain to be seen, a dark tide sluggishly welling from his side, and his young daughter trying pitifully to staunch it with the bit laced napkin wherewith she had bound her hair to make her pleasant in the men's eyes.
When Peter of the Red Moss saw the Earl, he tried to raise himself upon his elbow from the ground. One feeble hand went waveringly to his head as if to remove his bonnet in the presence of his chief.
Cassillis sank on his knees beside him and took the hand. There was a fragment of a leather rein still clasped in it, cut across with a clean, slicing cut.
'Peter, Peter, poor man, who has done this to you?' he asked.
The man that was about to die turned his eyes this way and that.
'My lord, my lord,' he said, struggling with the choking blood that rose in his throat, 'it was—it was—the grey man—!'
And the Earl listened for more with his ear down to Peter's mouth, but the spirit of the man who had died for his master ebbed dumbly away without another word. So there was nothing left for us to do but to carry him in, and this we did in the young sunshine of a pleasant morning. And the maid washed and streeked him, moaning and crooning over him piteously, as a dove does that wanteth company.
I went, as it happed, into the trance to fetch her a basin of clear water. The top of the meal-ark stood empty!