eatly hurt?" asked Ambrose, awe-stricken.

"The life is yet in him, but I fear me greatly it is passing fast," said
Lucas, in a low voice. "One of those lads smote him on the back with a
club, and struck him down at the poor maid's feet, nor hath he moved
since. It was that one young Headley is fighting with," he added.

"Bates! ah! Would that we had come sooner! What! more of this work--"

For just then a tremendous outcry broke forth, and there was a rush and
panic among those who had been leaping round the fire just before. "The
guard!--the King's men!" was the sound they presently distinguished.
They could hear rough abusive voices, shrieks and trampling of feet. A
few seconds more and all was still, only the fire remained, and in the
stillness the suppressed sobs and moans of Aldonza were heard.

"A light! Fetch a light from the fire!" said Lucas.

Ambrose ran out. The flame was lessening, but he could see the dark
bindings, and the blackened pages of the books he loved so well. A
corner of a page of Saint Augustine's Confessions was turned towards him
and lay on a singed fragment of Aldonza's embroidered curtain, while a
little red flame was licking the spiral folds of the screw, trying, as
it were, to gather energy to do more than blacken it. Ambrose could
have wept over it at any other moment, but now he could only catch up a
brand--it was the leg of his master's carved chair--and run back with
it. Lucas ventured to light a lamp, and they could then see the old
man's face pale, but calm and still, with his long white beard flowing
over his breast. There was no blood, no look of pain, only a set look
about the eyes; and Aldonza cried, "Oh, father, thou art better! Speak
to me! Let Master Lucas lift thee up!"

"Nay, my child. I cannot move hand or foot. Let me lie thus till the
Angel of Death come for me. He is very near." He spoke in short
sentences. "Water--nay--no pain," he added then, and Ambrose ran for
some water in the first battered fragment of a tin pot he could find.
They bathed his face and he gathered strength after a time to say, "A
priest!--oh for a priest to shrive and housel me."

"I will find one," said Ambrose, speeding out into the court over
fragments of the beautiful work for which Abenali was hated, and over
the torn, half-burnt leaves of the beloved store of Lucas. The fire had
died down, but morning twilight was beginning to dawn, and all was
perfectly still after