go so sadly, welladay! For
evil men have slain some one young and well favoured, as I learned
even now, when I helped you yonder. Tell me what has befallen, I
pray you, for I am afeard."

"Why," said one of the men, "we are honest folk, as our being with
the good fathers may be surety. The trouble is ours to bear."

But the blind man still kept his eyes hidden, and when the other
man bade him rise and come on with them he did not move.

"I know not what ails me," he said. "Even as I set my hand on him
you bear yonder, there came as it were a great flash of light
across my eyes, and needs must I fall away and hide them. I fear
that, not you, friends. I pray you, tell me what has been wrought."

"His foes have slain a bridegroom, most cruelly," one of the men
answered after a pause. "We do but bear him to Fernlea."

"What bridegroom?" he asked, in a hushed voice.

And then the pity of the thing came to him, and he wept silently.
Presently he raised his head, dashing away the tears as he did so.

"It is a many years since these eyes of mine have wept," he said.
"It seems to me that to weep for the woes of another is a wondrous
thing."

His eyes of a sudden opened widely in the moonlight, and he cried
out and clutched at the man next him.

"Brothers! brothers!" he said; "what is this?"

And again he set his hand to his eyes as if shading them, as does a
man at noontide.

"What ails you?" one of the men asked, wondering.

"I have no ailment--none. I see once more!" he cried. "Look you,
yonder is the blessed moon, and there lies a broken tree; and see,
there are fires on the hills of the Welshmen!"

Then with both hands wide before him he said:

"Now I see that I have set my hands on one who can be naught but a
saint most holy, for therefrom I have my sight again. Who is this
that has been slain?"

The men answered him, telling him. The blind man had heard, of
course, of the poor young king, and had, indeed, been brought
hither from wherever he lived that he might share in the largess of
the wedding day.

Now the men would go their way with him again, wondering, but yet
half doubting the truth of what the man said.

"It is in my mind that you have not been so blind as you would have
us think," said one, growling.

The man pointed at the cart as it went.

"Would I lie in that presence?" he said.

And with that he broke into the song I had heard. Some old chant of
victory it was, which he made to fit