dreaded the moment when his preserver must learn the truth. Would
she then give him up?

What, too, did Wilfred mean by his allusion to poison? Had he any
grounds for such suspicion? Poison was not an unknown agent amongst
the Normans. The great Duke himself had been suspected (doubtless
wrongfully) of removing Conan of Brittany by its means.

But fatigue overcame him, and he slept. And during that sleep
symptoms of fever began to show themselves. He began to talk in his
dreams--"There goes a fire--avoid it, it is an evil spirit--shoot
arrows at it. Make it tell the secret--now we shall know about the
swamp. Here is a fiend throttling me--oh, its awful eyes, they
blaze like two marsh fires. No, tie him to the wall; he shall tell
the truth or die. What are you giving me to drink?--it is blood,
blood. You have poisoned me--I burn, burn--my veins are full of
boiling lead--my heart a boiling cauldron. See, there are the marsh
fiends--they are carrying away Louis and Pierre--their tails are as
whips--ah, an arrow through each of their arms will stop them.
Where is my armour?--a hunting dress won't stop their darts, or
save one from their claws. Oh, father, help me--save me from the
goblins."

In this incoherent way he talked for hours, and the old dame
shuddered as he confused the real tragedy of the previous night
with imaginary terrors. Oh, how awful were his ravings to her, when
at last she learned the truth. Yet in those very ravings he showed
that remorse was at his heart.

She wept as she sat by his bed--wept over the son he had slain. The
details of that tragedy were, however, studiously concealed from
her by Wilfred's sedulous care; yet she knew Etienne had been the
leader of the hostile troop, in conflict with whom she supposed her
Eadwin to have fallen in fair open fight; for she was led to
understand he had been slain in the terrific struggle in the house.

"The only son of his mother, and she was a widow."

Father Kenelm came and read to her the story of the widow's son at
Nain, from King Alfred's Anglo-Saxon version of the Gospels. Not
even to him did she confide the secret, or tell who was separated
from the good priest only by a curtain--an instinct told her it was
right to tend and save--she would trust nothing else.

But in spite of this resolution the good father discovered it all;
for while he read the sweet story of old, he heard a cry in Norman
French.

"Keep off the fiend--the hobgoblin--he