he mockingly caressed my face with his abhorred hand.
"Still, this must even serve, though I would fain find for thee a more
bitter way to death"; and he gently and carefully drew the pillow from
beneath my head. "This leaves no marks and tells no tales, and permits
no dying cry."

He was looking at me, the pillow in his hands, his gesture that of a
tender nurse, when a light tap sounded on the door. He paused, then came
a louder knock, one pushed, and knocked again.

"Open, in the name of the Dauphin!" came a voice I knew well, the voice
of D'Aulon.

"The rope of Judas strangle thee!" said Brother Thomas, dropping the
pillow and turning to the casement. But it was heavily barred with
stanchions of iron, as the manner is, and thereby he might not flee.

Then came fiercer knocking with a dagger hilt, and the cry, "Open, in the
name of the Dauphin, or we burst the door!"

Brother Thomas hastily closed the wooden shutter, to darken the chamber
as much as might be. "Gently, gently," he said. "Disturb not my
penitent, who is newly shrived, and about to pass"; and so speaking, he
withdrew the bolt.

D'Aulon strode in, dagger in hand, followed by the physician.

"What make you here with doors barred, false priest?" he said, laying his
hand on the frock of Noiroufle.

"And what make you here, fair squire, with arms in a sick man's chamber,
and loud words to disturb the dying? And wherefore callest thou me
'false priest'? But an hour agone, the blessed Maid herself brought me
hither, to comfort and absolve her follower, to tend him, if he lived
and, if he must die, to give him his dues as a Christian man. And the
door was bolted that the penitent might be private with his confessor,
for he has a heavy weight to unburden his sinful soul withal."

"Ay, the Maid sent thee, not knowing who thou wert, the traitor friar
taken at St. Loup, and thou hast a tongue that beguiled her simplicity.
But one that knew thee saw thy wolfs face in her company, and told me,
and I told the Maid, who sent me straightway back from the gate, that
justice might be done on thee. Thou art he whom this Scot charged with
treason, and would have slain for a spy, some nights agone."

Brother Thomas cast up his eyes to heaven.

"Forgive us our trespasses," said he, "as we forgive them that trespass
against us. Verily and indeed I am that poor friar who tends the
wounded, and verify I am he against whom this young Scot, as, I fear, is
th