Under the shade of a beech tree on the slope of a hill a man sat with a bare sword laid across his knees. On the hill-top above, half-hidden by pines, the walls of a ruined house rose against the unclouded sky. A deep valley dwindled beneath, choked with woodland and cleft in twain by a white band where a torrent thundered. Far to the south mountains towered against the gold of the evening sky.
It was Tristan le Sauvage who sat with his sword laid across his knees, watching the valley and the darkening hillside. Near by, an iron pot steamed over a wood fire, the smoke thereof ascending straight into the heavens. By the gate of the ruin a cistus was in bloom, its petals falling upon the long grass and the broken stones.
Tristan had been busy burnishing his sword, handling it lovingly, even as a miser fingers gold. Shield, helmet, and hauberk lay in the grass at his feet. His face was less boyish than of old, though but a month had passed since he had been left stricken and bleeding in the woods. He had been near death, and the staunch struggle to escape the grave had set a maturer forethought on his face. Moreover, he had suffered in heart as well as body, and the brisk youth in him moved to a sadder tune.
As he sat there under the shadow of the beech tree, burnishing his sword and parleying with the thoughts within his heart, a horn called to him from out the woods. The shrill echoes clamoured amid the hills.
“Tristan, Tristan,” they seemed to cry, like ghost voices stealing out of the night.
The man rose up from under the shade of the tree, and looked out down the hillside under his hand. Betimes, a figure mounted on a shaggy horse drew from the woods, and climbed the slope towards the ruin. The man was clad in chain mail that rippled in the sunlight, and he carried neither shield nor spear. At his back he bore a stout yew bow, and the body of a deer was slung before him on the saddle.
Tristan went out from under the tree, his bronzed face beaming in the sun. It was Samson the Heretic, returned from hunting in the woods, Samson, who had taken Tristan for dead where the Bishop’s men had left him, and recalled him to life amid the grey walls of the old ruin. The Heretic had followed Rosamunde from Joyous Vale, and lurked in the woods to cheat the Papists of their prey. Skulking with a few followers in the thickets, he had seen Tristan swoop from out the woods and seize on Rosamunde from the litter. Thus it had fallen out that Samson had found Tristan bleeding under the trees where he had been outmatched by Jocelyn’s men. Samson had taken him upon his horse, abandoning Rosamunde for Tristan’s sake, and in this old sanctuary had wrought his cure.
The men met with that heartiness of hand and voice that bespeaks brotherhood, that linking up of faith with straight looks and fearless words. Tristan, still smiling, took the body of the deer from the Heretic’s saddle bow. The shaft had flown straight to the poor beast’s heart. Tristan marked it, as he slung the deer to a bough of the beech tree, building analogies in his brain.
“Were this Jocelyn,” he said, “I should envy you, brother, to the point of death.”
“That murderous hand of yours——”