ace stifles me,"
he added. "Let us out."

"Whither shall we go, master?"

"To Blythburgh Manor," he answered, "for there I may win tidings. David,
bide you here, and if you can learn aught follow us across the moor. The
manor cannot be missed."

So once more Hugh and Dick mounted their horses and rode away through
the town, stopping now and again before some house they knew and calling
to its inmates. But though they called loudly none answered. Soon they
grew sure that this was because there were none to answer, since of
those houses many of the doors stood open. Only one living creature did
they see in Dunwich. As they turned the corner near to the Blythburgh
Gate they met a grey-haired man wrapped up in tattered blankets which
were tied about him with haybands. He carried in his hand a beautiful
flagon of silver. Doubtless he had stolen it from some church.

Seeing them, he cast this flagon into the snow and began to whimper like
a dog.

"Mad Tom," said Dick, recognizing the poor fellow. "Tell us, Thomas,
where are the folk of Dunwich?"

"Dead, dead; all dead!" he wailed, and fled away.

"Stay! What of Master de Cressi?" called Hugh. But the tower of the
church round which he had vanished only echoed back across the snow,
"What of Master de Cressi?"

Then at last Hugh understood the awful truth.

It was that, save those who had fled, the people of Dunwich were slain
with the Sword of Pestilence, and all his kin among them.

They were on the Blythburgh Marshes, travelling thither by the shortest
road. The moon was down and the darkness dense, for the snow-clouds hid
the stars.

"Let us bide here a while," said Grey Dick as their horses blundered
through the thick reeds. "It will soon be sunrise, and if we go on in
this gloom we shall fall into some boghole or into the river, which I
hear running on our left."

So they halted their weary horses and sat still, for in his wretchedness
Hugh cared not what he did.

At length the east began to lighten, turning the sky to a smoky red.
Then the rim of the sun rising out of the white-flecked ocean, threw
athwart the desolate marsh a fierce ray that lay upon the snows like a
sword of blood. They were standing on the crest of a little mound, and
Dick, looking about him, knew the place.

"See," he said, pointing toward the river that ran near by, "it is just
here that you killed young Clavering this day two years ago. Yonder also
I shot the French knights,