rang a chime upon its little,
silver bells; a merry chime and mocking, that seemed to gibe at coming
day.

Now in a while, looking upon that awful, dim-seen shape, Beltane spake
low-voiced.

"O Beda!" he whispered, "O manly heart hid 'neath a Fool's disguise! O
Fool, that now art wiser than the wisest! Thy pains and sorrows have
lifted thee to heaven, methinks, and freed now of thy foolish clay thou
dost walk with angels and look within the face of God! But, by thine
agonies endured, now do I swear this night to raise to thy poor Fool's
body a pyre fit for the flesh of kings!"

Then Beltane arose and lifting high his axe, shook it against
Garthlaxton's frowning might, where was neither glint of armour nor
gleam of pike-head, and turning, hasted back to that dark and silent
company which, at his word, rose up from brake and fern and thicket,
and followed whither he led, a long line, soundless and phantom-like
within a phantom world, where a grey mist swirled and drifted in the
death-cold air of dawn. Swift and silent they followed him, these wild
men, with fierce eyes and scowling faces all set toward that mighty
keep that loomed high against the glimmering stars. Axe and bow, sword
and pike and gisarm, in rusty mail, in rags of leather and skins, they
crept from bush to bush, from tree to tree, till they were come to that
little pool wherein Beltane had bathed him aforetime in the dawn. Here
they halted what time Beltane sought to and fro along the bank of the
stream, until at last, within a screen of leaves and vines he found the
narrow opening he sought. Then turned he and beckoned those ghostly,
silent shapes about him, and speaking quick and low, counselled them
thus:

"Look now, this secret burrow leadeth under the foundations of the
keep; thus, so soon as we be in, let Walkyn and Giles with fifty men
haste to smite all within the gate-house, then up with portcullis and
down with drawbridge and over into the barbican there to lie in ambush,
what time Roger and I, with Eric here and the fifty and five, shall
fire the keep and, hid within the dark, raise a mighty outcry, that
those within the keep and they that garrison the castle, roused by the
fire and our shout, shall issue out amazed. So will we fall upon them
and they, taken by surprise, shall seek to escape us by the gate. Then,
Walkyn, sally ye out of the barbican and smite them at the drawbridge,
so shall we have them front and rear. How think you? Is it