reaming, dreaming that he stood on his head upon a
wooden plank, as once he had seen a juggler do, which turned
round one way while he turned round the other, till at length
some one shouted at him, and he tumbled off the board and hurt
himself. Then he awoke to hear a voice shouting surely
enough--the voice of Matthew, the chaplain of Steeple Church.

"Awake!" said the voice. "In God's name, I conjure you, awake!"

"What is it?" he said, lifting his head sleepily, and becoming
conscious of a dull pain across his forehead.

"It is that death and the devil have been here, Sir Wulf."

"Well, they are often near together. But I thirst. Give me
water."

A serving-woman, pallid, dishevelled, heavy-eyed, who was
stumbling to and fro, lighting torches and tapers, for it was
still dark, brought it to him in a leathern jack, from which he
drank deeply.

"That is better," he said. Then his eye fell upon the bloody
sword set point downwards in the wood of the table before him,
and he exclaimed, "Mother of God! what is that? My uncle's
silver-hilted sword, red with blood, and Rosamund's gold chain
upon the hilt! Priest, where is the lady Rosamund?"

"Gone," answered the chaplain in a voice that sounded like a
groan. "The women woke and found her gone, and Sir Andrew lies
dead or dying in the solar--but now I have shriven him--and oh!
we have all been drugged. Look at them!" and he waved his hand
towards the recumbent forms. "I say that the devil has been
here."

Wulf sprang to his feet with an oath.

"The devil? Ah! I have it now. You mean the Cyprian chapman
Georgios. He who sold wine."

"He who sold drugged wine," echoed the chaplain, "and has stolen
away the lady Rosamund."

Then Wulf seemed to go mad.

"Stolen Rosamund over our sleeping carcases! Stolen Rosamund with
never a blow struck by us to save her! O, Christ, that such a
thing should be! O, Christ, that I should live to hear it!" And
he, the mighty man, the knight of skill and strength, broke down
and wept like a very child. But not for long, for presently he
shouted in a voice of thunder:

"Awake, ye drunkards! Awake, and learn what has chanced to us.
Your lady Rosamund has been raped away while we were lost in
sleep!"

At the sound of that great voice a tall form arose from the
floor, and staggered towards him, holding a gold cross in its
hand.

"What awful words are those my brother?" asked Godwin, who, pale
and dull-eyed, rocked to and fro bef