“As the guests danced within, these nobles fought without. A man dared not have interposed; it was matter of life and death to them, and they were there to prove it.
“I was glad, as I stood on the further side the hedge, to mark the vigour and the skill of our Geoffrey. Methought the vantage was with him, and with my whole heart I hated his opponent, the cold, selfish Ernle Deane, and wished him to succumb.
“And so, by mine honour, he should have done, for my boy was the pride of us all for swordsmanship; but it was not to be.
“Geoffrey de Troyes never suffered more from his mortal wound than I did in my heart and my pride, as I led him, bleeding piteously to this very stable-room, where he sank on the hay and said he must die.
“‘Look to it,’ groaned the poor young noble, as he lay dying, ‘that Mistress Beatrice Savile has this token from me—my gold chain—warn her from me when I am dead, that she wed not Ernle Deane—he is bad to the core, and she is too good to mend him. Oh! but for that hateful vision!’
“‘What vision, a God’s name?’ I cried.
“And he told me trembling—he who had never trembled of his whole life!—that even at the moment when he had thought to subdue his enemy—even as he raised his sword to strike home to a worthless heart—even then had his arm fallen paralysed and a frightful shiver quite unmanned him at the sight of a poor monk in white, who stood some yards away, and raised his cowl with a thin white hand, and fixed unearthly eyes upon him with a steadfast look that drew the soul away from the deadliest earthly peril.
“‘And so I fell!’ cried the shamed noble, crimsoning though the pallor of exhaustion. ‘I—a practised hand, a not unworthy courage—a De Troyes! I fell—for this!—and so would any man have fallen,’ he defiantly ended, ‘for ’twas a devil—’twas Pietro Rinucci himself, who came from hell to lure me from my hopes of earthly happiness. O, life! O, Beatrice!’
“And I nursed him and wept over him like any woman, whilst one young, bright life more departed,
“In truth, young master,” ended honest Ralph, “the noble Geoffrey may have been deceived, and fancied this; but, you shall pardon me, I would rather think that armies of devils nightly march these grounds than that one De Troyes was ever seen to quail, save under magic! Thus it is that I, and that many of us yet believe in the spectre of Pietro Rinucci, ‘the White Monk.’”