Beltane stooped and raised
this slender, shrouded figure in his arms and reverently bore it out
into the shadows.

And there, all in the tender radiance of the moon, they buried her
whose name they never knew, and stood a while in silence. Then,
pointing to the new-turned earth, Friar Martin spake soft-voiced:

"Lo, here--in but a little time, wild flowers shall bloom above her--
yet none purer or sweeter than she! In a little shall the grass be
green again, and she sleep here forgot by all--save God! And God, my
brothers, is a gentle God and very pitiful--so now do we leave her in
God's abiding care."

And presently they turned, soft-footed, and went upon their way leaving
the place to solitude.

But from the vault of heaven the stars looked down upon that lonely
grave like the watching eyes of holy angels.

CHAPTER XII

WHICH TELLS HOW DUKE IVO'S GREAT GALLOWS CEASED TO BE

Scarce a mile without the walls of the fair city of Belsaye my lord
Duke had builded him a great gallows, had set it high upon a hill for
all the world to see; from whose lofty cross-beams five score rogues
had hanged ere now, had writhed and kicked their lives away and rotted
there in company, that all the world might know how potent was the
anger of my lord Duke Ivo.

Day in, day out, from rosy morn till dewy eve, it frowned upon Belsaye,
a thing of doom whose grim sight should warn rebellious townsfolk to
dutiful submission; by night it loomed, a dim-seen, brooding horror,
whose loathsome reek should mind them how all rogues must end that
dared lift hand or voice against my lord Duke, or those proud barons,
lords, and knights who, by his pleasure, held their fiefs with rights
of justice, the high, the middle and the low.

Day in, day out, the men of Belsaye eyed it askance 'neath scowling
brows and, by night, many a clenched hand was shaken and many a
whispered malediction sped, toward that thing of doom that menaced them
from the dark.

To-night the moon was full, and thus, following Friar Martin's bony
outstretched finger, Beltane of a sudden espied afar the Duke's great
gallows, rising grisly and stark against the moon's round splendour. So
for a space, standing yet within the shade of the woods, Beltane stared
fierce-eyed, the while Giles, with Roger at his elbow, pointed out
divers shapes that dangled high in air, at sight of which the friar
knelt with bowed head and lips that moved in prayer: and Walkyn,
scowling, mutte