has got burning
arrows--snakes! snakes! there are snakes in the bed!"

"What means this, good mother?"

"Oh, thou wilt not betray him."

"Hast thou a fugitive there? Methinks I know the voice. Can it be
the son of the wicked baron?"

"He is not answerable for his father's sin; oh, do not betray
him--he is mad with fever."

"Dost thou mean to release him, should he get well? Methinks it
were better that he should die."

"With all his sins upon his head? May the saints forbid."

"At least were he but absolved after due contrition, and thou
knowest that thou hast little cause to love him."

"His death cannot give me back my boy," and she wept once more.

"Nay, it cannot; but if thou dost save him, it shall be under a
solemn pledge never to betray the place of our retreat. I will
myself swear him upon the Holy Gospels. But woe to him should our
young lord Wilfred discover him; I verily believe he would die the
death of St. Edmund {xiii}."

"Canst thou not teach poor Wilfred mercy--thou art his pastor and
teacher?"

"He grows fiercer daily, and chafes at all restraint. Remember what
he has suffered."

"The greater the merit, could he but forgive. You will keep my
secret, father?"

"I will: let me see him."

Father Kenelm went behind the curtain and watched the sufferer.
Etienne glared at him with lacklustre eyes, but knew him not, and
continued his inarticulate ravings. His forgiving nurse moistened
his lips from time to time with water, and by him was a decoction
of cooling herbs, with which she assuaged his parching thirst.

"Thou art a true follower of Him who prayed for His murderers,"
said Father Kenelm. "The Man of Sorrows comfort thee."

CHAPTER XIV. THE GUIDE.

Rarely had a spring occurred so dry as that of 1069. With the
beginning of March dry winds set in from the east, no rain fell,
and the watercourses shrank to summer proportions.

All that winter Hugo de Malville had mourned in hopeless grief the
loss of his boy--his only child; but at length grief deepened into
one bitter thirst--a thirst for revenge.

That the Dismal Swamp protected the objects of his hatred from his
sword he felt well assured; and had the frost been keen enough to
render the marshes penetrable, he would have risked all in a
desperate attempt to root out the vermin, as he called the poor
natives, from the woods.

But frost alternated with thaw, and snow with rain, and no attempt
was likely to be attended wit