“At the frugal supper, that very night, he observed the monk ate even less than was his wont, and of one dish only, the which he also pressed upon the young lad by his side, seeming to wish to keep the others from him. The others of the family, Giles Hughson and his dame, did eat as usual, and were both found dead on the morrow.
“The monk strove to comfort the poor boy by every means in his power, but it was all of no avail. The lad seized a moment, fled into the wood, and there wrote down all that he had seen and suspected, with which account he presently did seek the justices. These caused proper inquiry into the manner of the deaths of the workman and his wife to be made, and, finding they had died of potent poison, instituted careful search for the person of the White Monk, who had vanished from the cottage.
“At length they found him, in a strange state for one of his way of living. Into the wood had he gone, but not so far as that he could hide him. He had stopped beside a little brook, where he had sat when first he saw fair Margaret, the sister of his victims. There, even there, was he found, in so deep contemplation that he never heard his pursuers’ footsteps. He had made a cross of two elder branches (folk about us say that the elder-wood formed the Cross whereon Christ died), and having set it on the summit of a bank, was deep in prayer, as it seemed, before it.
“One of his Italian repentances, I doubt not.
“He seemed in sore distress of mind, and lost to all thought of his surroundings.
“So they took him; the foreign wild beast, tracked at last. But not without trouble for he fought like the panther he was. Escaping lissomely from their hands at the moment when they would have bound him, the ex-bravo snatched a genuine stiletto from the folds of his monastic frock and stabbed one man to death, laughing coarsely at the stupid astonishment of the harquebusiers to see this weapon in so unseemly a hand.
“He had no chance, being taken thus unawares, and exhaustion came upon him; so, with tremours, the officers of justice held him fast. Before the first cord was fastened round his struggling wrists, he fell back, rigid, in their arms; sighed once or twice, smiled bitterly to himself at their consternation, and flung his head back, dead.
“A small quantity of a green powder was found on him (a large dose, I ween, had killed so hardy a villain!), and by comparing the signs of death with those of Giles Hughson and his wife, they saw he had poisoned himself some time within the last five hours. Whether he had seen Margaret again, and by seeing her upon the earth, had come to know himself too bad for it; or whether the weariness attendant upon sins so heavy had worn him out at last, remains a mystery. The leeches said a man so wasted and wan as this could scarce, in the way of Nature, have lived many years longer; but I question this, and so did the men who had so great trouble to hold him!
“News travelled slowly in those days from Italy to England, and it was not until very shortly after the White Monk’s death that our town learnt it had harboured Pietro Rinucci, the slayer of the two good brothers, Ambrose and Gilbert de Troyes. No one ever told Mistress Margaret that she had spoken with such a man. And now the beautiful maiden rose from her bed, and asked for her mostly costly gowns, of amber, blue and rosy colours; and went amongst her friends brightly, wreathed with pearls and radiant in smiles. She was thought to have recovered, though she looked ethereal as a daisy or white cloud; but she said and averred that she was dying, and that her brother Ambrose had appeared to her in a vision, bidding her make all speed to do what remained to her upon the earth and be soon ready, when he should come behind the angels to fetch her hence. Her kinsfolk thought she wandered in her mind. She asked for the man who had wooed her, and held long speech with him, very merrily, and yet with tears; beseeching him to pause e’er he rashly threw away his life on this earth, since we know not in the beginning, whither our pleasant sins may carry us, and when we have no enjoyment of them, save by memory, what are they to us? The instruments of our present ruin.
“‘All this,’ said the lovely Margaret with a smile, ‘hath right off, my Lord, been heard, by you and others; but from a lady’s lips (and that lady who is even now bent to consider the past failings of her own life, soon to be taken from her) it hath been made evident to me, these poor oft-repeated words shall have some power. God bless you, my Lord—farewell.’