Igraine remembered the peasant’s little son.
“Was it you,” she said, “who gave a peasant fellow near here a saint’s dust to scatter over a sick child?”
The old man shook his head and smiled enigmatically.
“I have no dealings in such marvels,” he said.
“The boy died.”
“Of course.”
“They will sell your dust some day.”
A keen look, cynical with beaming scorn, spread over the man’s gaunt face.
“Much good may it do them,” he said; “death is monstrous flatterer of mere clay. I may feed a rose bush with my bones; a better fate than the cheating of superstitious women.”