“It is the death toll,” she said, “I have heard such a sound before at night. The poor souls do not like to die alone in the dark. And those who hear the bell sometimes take pity.”
Stretched at the foot of the yew tree with the black plumes curving overhead, Marpasse and Denise found an old man whose face was as white as the cloak he wore. A hand was rocking to and fro ringing the leper bell, whose melancholy sound seemed to die away with the moonlight into the midnight of the yews.
Marpasse bent over him, she had seen too much of the rougher aspects of life to be greatly afraid of a leper.
“Hallo, father,” she said, “here is company for you, you can stop your ringing.”
The man’s arm fell like a snapped bough, and the bell came to the earth with a dull, metallic rattle. The skull face, unmasked now that the end was near, betrayed that the bell carrier had been starved by the famine that the King’s host had left behind them in those parts. He was blind and deaf with the death fog, nor did he know that Marpasse was near him till she spoke.
“Good soul, have pity.”
He turned his blind face towards Marpasse.
“I am going yonder out of the world, and it is bad to be alone when the evil spirits are abroad, and to hear no prayer spoken. I rang my bell, good soul, for St. Chrysostom, he of the golden mouth, promised me that I should not die alone in the dark.”
Marpasse sat down beside him, and beckoned Denise to her.
“Rest in peace, brother. What would comfort you?”