*>, &. ^-' ■^ ^ x<,. IMAGE EVALUATION TEST TARGET (MT-3) k i'- l< MP U.s fA 1.0 I.I 1.25 ^m iiiiiM " Jl Ilia U llli 1.6 - 6' V] <^ /^ 'c>l > ^;; '/ '/A *'e%. Hiotographic Sciences Corporation 23 WEST r.AiN STREET WEBSTER, NY. 14580 (716) 873-4S03 i\ iV -^ ■i? <> C^ % '1j^ y^ ' signifie "A SUIVRE", le symbols V signifie "FIN". Maps, plates, charts, etc., may be filmed at different reduction ratios. Those too large to be entirely included in one exposure are filmed beginning in the upper left hand corner, left to right and top to bottom, as many frames as required. The following diagrams illustrate the method: Les cartes, planches, tableaux, etc., peuvent dtre film6s A des taux de reduction diffdrents. Lorsque le docuiT^ent est trop grand pour dtre reproduit en un seul cliche, il est film6 d partir de Tangle sup^rieur gauche, de gauche & droite, et de haut en bas, en prenant le nombre d'images ndcessaire. Les diagrammes suivants illustrent la mdthode. irrata to pelure, n d 1 2 3 ( ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS T ■! BY DAVID CHRISTIE MURRAY AND HENRY HERMAN ) trbc un^i0corv'b country from wbo«e bourn "Ho traveller retunw !-.v WILLIAM BRYCE. *■* * __— — j=aa Entered .ccording to the Act of Parliament of Canada, in the year o-^J^on^^ eight hundred and eighty-seven. by W.llu- Cktck. in the office of the Minister of Agriculture. Etnd the ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS ^m m ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS CHAPTER I. The July moon hung at the zenith in a sky absolutely unclouded, and its light fell upon a scene the like of which no eye has looked on for now fuU fifteen hundred years. A circle of huge and venerable oak trees, or- dered with geometrical precision, and so planted that the extended arms of each touched lightly those of its neighbours, en- closed a space of land a mile in width. The continuity of leafy touch was perfect save in four places. Within the umbrageous ring lay another at a distance of not more than a score of yards, and within that another, and B ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS SO on in rings tliat lessened and lessened to the number of thirty-nine. Through the grove thus made ran two roads, forming a cross within the circle, and in the exact centre of this amazing forest solitude rose a great rock, from the top of which the two roads were seen as four, each narrowing between the broadening segments of the wood. This rock, around which the symmetrical forest had been planted, was, like the mighty grove itself, a piece of nature, modelled and moulded by human art. Within it, by almost an infinity of labour, a cavern had been exca- vated, and the prodigious boulder of granite was no more than a shell. Generations of indefatigable w^orkmen had carved all away save for three mrtssive pillars, which were left to support the roof. Rough-hewn steps ascended to the bare crown of the rock, whereon was set, sloping to east and to west, the curved sacrificial stone. Of the four ways which led to this great rock through the grove of oak trees three would have seemed to be rarely traversed. ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS 3 In the soft and elastic turf of the fourth a path was traced with enough of d'stinctness to indicate tlie frequent passing of feet. And in the broad strip of moonUt turf between the massive shadows thrown by the trees walked a regal and martial figure. His feet were almost soundless on the grass, for he was shod only with thong-tied sandals of pliant leather, and his steps fell as softly as though he had been bare-footed. From the ankle to the knee rose greaves of leather, and between tliese and the wolfskin kilt the bared tliighs shone white and lustrous. Over one slioulder was thrown a mere broad band of wolfskin, and this together with the kilt was bound about the waist by a belt of coloured hide. The brawny arms were quite bare ex- cept for heavy bangles of gold, worn neaj- the shoulder and held in place by the swelling muscle below them. Now and then a swift and furtive flash of polished metal betrayed a great knife at the man's girdle, and behind him hung a sliield studded over with spikes of burnished iron, on which the moonlight gleamed with a continual changeful play. The B 2 ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS ! I ■ I ' ; i I' haif-naked chest and back and the bare arms and thighs looked like marble in the moonlight, and seemed the whiter by contrast with the flowing black hair and the dark hue of the skins. The man wore a circlet of gold about his forehead, and he walked as though he felt himself to be worthy of that distinction. On the side from which he approached the brow of the rock projected, and below the overhanging ledge the shadow was in- tense. The man walked to the rock with no abatement of pace, and disappeared in the dense shadow r,s though the granite had gaped to swallow him. He had done no more than push aside a hanging curtain of skins which sheltered the entrance of the cavern. A dozen half-naked figures leapt at him, knife in hand. * It is Feltor, the king ! * cried one, and they fell back from him with obeisances. Pine torches glared and smoked, straggling out of or drooping from niches cut for their reception in the rocky wall. The chamber was a network of flaring light and flying gloom, and in the red and yellow glow of the ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS s torches the bare limbs that had shone marble white outside flashed dimly now like bronze. Feltor walked on without so much as a gesture or a glance, skirted the three grey pillars of rough-cut granite, threw aside a hanging of skins at the further end of the chamber and disappeared. For a second or two he moved in profound darkness, bilt ad- vancing with a firm and accustomed footstep he threw aside a third curtain, and saw a jagged and broken line of light which peered between the wuil Ci" the rocky passage an^l the edge of yet another hanging of fufs. Ilere he paused for a moment, and then advancing with a step as stealthy and as silent as a cat's, he drew aside the final curtain and entered on a circular chamber, the two occu- pants of which — a man and a woman — were bending over a fire, the man tall and gaunt, with a sweeping white beard, the woman with an unusual grace of form. The two were watching something with great intentness of purpose, and the sweeping beard was caught for a moment by a sidelong motion of the woman's, and streamed over her beautiful hair J -1* ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS i i I'ii ■ ■■' \ like a network of silver spread over a globe of gold. Alike unconscious of this slight contact the two stood in rapt observation, the girl snaking her head hither and thither in the eagerness of her regard, and the old man bending immobile above her. The king, still grasping the curtain of furs with one hand, stood silent. ' It is well nigh ready,' said the old man. He spoke with a muffled voice, and the tone fell with a strange deadness on the ear. The light of the two copper lamps by which the chamber was illumined did not reach to the roof, but died midway, leaving an eternity of blackness to the imagination, The walls were heavily lined with skins. The floor was covered deep with strewn soutliernwood, and its aromatic odour mad 3 the air heavy. Silence grew obtrusive here, and seemed to demand to be broken by a cry. The king's eyes gloated on the girl, and a shadow of passion rested upon his face. * It is ready,' the girl cried on a sudden, and covering both hands with a pl".e of dressed deerskin which lay near her, she seized the j i ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS copper bowl whose contents she and the old man had watched so intently, and removed it with a smooth and rapid action from the fire to a roughly oval table of solid granite which stood in the centre of the chamber. The whole movement was so free and continuous that it looked like a single gesture. She had fallen upon one knee before the table, and her muffled hands still held the copper t)owl, when she looked up, and across the thin and waving column of steam which arose from the vessel saw Feltor's face. For a mere second the animal mastery of desire she read there held her bound, and she looked back with startled and almost frightened eyes. Then her wliole face gleamed into a smile of pure coquettish triumph, and she laughed aloud. ' So,' she said, ' you have left the lovely Vreda after all.' The king's face went white, and, still cling- ing to the curtain of skins with one hand, he twice made an irresolute motion with the other. Then he extended his arm to the full, and with a shaking forefinger pointed to the copper bowl. ■■' 1. . ' ■ ■!■. 8 ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS 'I 1 I ; ' Wenegog,' he demanded of the gaunt old man, * what is this ? ' 'It is the draught/ said the old man c!alml}\ * To-night all will be over/ * To-night ? ' ' To-night.* The answer fell like a calm echo. The : , ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS >7 faces, and the men lounged on their great iron-apiked shields ol hide-bound wood or on cumbrous axes and spears. This savage sol- diery kept back a mob of half naked men and women and wholly naked children who swarmed about them with a constant subdued murmur. As the arch-Druid approached, the mur- mur swelled for an instant and then altogether subsided. The irregular line drew into order and the men stood to their arms. Wenegog, followed by his daughter and Feltor, passed through a space opened in the ranks, still nursing the poisonous brew in its spar vessel. Had the people been aware of what he held there no dread of his known communion with the gods or terror of his powers would have saved him from being torn to pieces. The very guards would have helped the vengeance- He knew that to the full, and he walked un- moved. In those stern times men knew but little of pity, charity, and unselfishness. Yet here and there the virtues lived and warmed a human heart. They lived in Vreda, and so |g ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS passing strange and sweet it was that any one should have the power to hurt and yet the will to comfort, tiiat the people loved her as though she had been an angel from the skies. \ \' ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS CHAPTER IL - n The three neared the house followed by all ey«8. Trailing .eepers and ferns and cling- ing mosses gave a velvety look to the huge stones of the old walls. Beyond the unclothed and open doorway, which was but just high enough to allow the gaunt figure of the Druid to enter without stooping, lay a wide hall, bounded on three sides by the walls of the building itself, and on the fourth cut ofi* frpm the rest of the house by three massive pillars of granite between which hung curtains of alternate stripes of leopard skin and Syrian scarlet wool. These curtains were suspended on rods of pine which ran along the whole breadth of the building. The hall was open to the air, and the moonlight aided the copper lamps which illumined it. 9 ill OHO ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS ijii IM," I!! Grotesque figures representing gods and warriors had been cut into the stone of the walls, and the lines were filled in with colour, red, blue, and yellow. Solid blocks of granite half polished by long usage formed both benches and tables, and piles of skins thrown into corners here and there showed the sleeping- pi aces of guards, attendants, and servants. On the side opposite the curtains buttresses of stone projected squarely t© the height of some ten feet, forming a half-scoro or so of niches, each about four yards wide and long. These small apartments were all roofed m by squared pine stems. The pri- vacy of the queen's women v/as secured by the heavy woollen curtains hung in front of each chamber. Lyres, harps, cymbals, and triangles of iron lay here and there, and great spinning-wheels of Roman manufacture gave evidence of femi- nine industry. The immense hall was full of guards and serving men and women, with here and there a chief, the fact of whose rank was proclaimed uy the long sword he wore at his side. A I ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS 21 faint hum of conversation made itself more felt than heard. That portion of the building which lay beyond the curtains was roofed in with great beams of pine. The hardy Eastern sailors had evidently found a ready market here, and everything betokened comfort and barbaric luxury. The foot trod upon a carpet of loosely flung skins of all kinds. The stone '^.nnches were covered deep with rugs of Per- sian wool and with skins of panther, hon, and antelope. Etruscan jars, and brown stone pottery, on which Greek artists had depicted the accions of their gods, stood side by side with drinking-cups of amber and tankards of pure crystal, while twisted horns, tipped and edged with gold, and jugs and bowls of granite represented some of the native handicrafts. Some fifteen paces beyond the curtains two sets of treble granite pillars divided the place into three apartments, the centre one being open and serving as an antechamber for the two others. The one on the right was the chamber of tJie tjueen. and the one on the left that ff the king. Both were shut off by heavy m. Uv 33 ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS curtains. In the open antechamber stood a block of green and red serpentine marble, hollowed out at the top, and fitted with a tray of burnished copper rods. Upon this altar burned a small fire of pine cones sprinkled with borax, the smoke rising and curling along the ceiling until it found an outlet in the roof- less hall beyond. A girl dressed in a square white woollen wrapper knotted on the right shoulder and under the right arm, and who still held a pine cone which was to replenish the fire, had fallen asleep over her task, and was lying at the foot of the altar with heaving bosom and care- lessly stretched limbs. Two others were sit- ting on a heap of skins on the floor near her and conversing in whispers. Within her own chamber, upon a raised couch of panther skins, lay Vreda the queen. She was robed in a gown of a pale sea-green stuff'. Her white arms, exquisitely and tenderly rounded, lay in complete lassitude. The dark eyelashes rested softly on the marble cheek. One bare foot was thrust beyond the covering of skin which had been laid above it. But m ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS 23 for the scarcely perceptible movement of the lovely bust, the lines of which were defined by the clinging robe, one who looked upon her could scarce have thought her alive. Beside her knelt that inspired and valiant messenger who first brought the story of the Tidings of Great Joy to these isles, David, the saint, who journeying from Jerusalem to An- tioch, from Antioch to Athens, from Athens to Eome, from Eome to Gaul, had preached the Gospel in well-nigh every tongue spoken in Europe, and to the men of well-nigh every tribe. Now in the very twilight of his later days his indomitable soul had led him hither, to dare new dangers, to endure new hardships, to defy a new priestcraft, and to gather a new harvest of souls. Years and cares, wild exultations, mad de- spairings, ascetic self-denyings, wrestlings with many fiends in many wildernesses, famine, shipwreck, the scourge, imprisonment — all these had worn and wasted him to the bone. He had suffered what a man may suffer, save death, and to that he looked in pious hope of an eternal refuge. 5|, 24 ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS To many his face was a terror, because of a certain awful calm which lived in his eyes. It bespoke a consciousness of power, and a daring altogether more than human. Few men \ were able to endure his look without some touch of tremor or misgiving, for his gaze % seemed to pass within, and to read the hidden secrets of the heart. Worn and wasted as he was by the incredible .buffetings of the world through nigh a hundred years, that which was left of the man was like oak for toughness and endurance. The mere ring of hair whicli fringed his head was grizzled, but it curled springily still like wire. His crisp grey beard and beetling eyebrows were laced with white. His complexion was at once dark and ruddy his face was a map of wrinkles, and hi high, narrowing forehead was furrowed lik a ploughed field. He spoke long and earnestly, and Vreda^ lay without a sign. He paused at last, anc she opened her eye? aiid luoivt-d at him. Wiri that mere \\h\w?aini. isei^A^i her hand, fearing that the last hoxir had come, but little later she ralhed ^omewhar. and spoke faintlv, witji closed eves. ' I am lired. I am not lonjj for tliis world. % ^K UWHUttaknJWIMHIiiia 36 ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS Farewell. We may meet in the House of Odan.' ' Nay,' said David. * There is no meeting? there, dear child. On the road whereby thou goest lieth darkness. Art blind, poor suffering thing, over whom my soul doth yearn, as in its travail ? Have pity on thyself. Turn thee about, that by God's mercy we may meet in tliat city whereof it is written that the Lord Himself is the light of it, where there is no more sorrow, and nought can enter that doth hurt or harm, and He shall wipe away all tears ti'om our eyes.' ' Perchance they are the same,' answered V^reda wearily. ' I know not. If they be not the same 1 will go to mine own people.' And with that she lay so still and grey that the Saint feared anew. He rose and stood with clasped hands above her, looking down fixedly for a long w^hile. Once more the pa- thetic eyes opened, and he felt his heart so hot and full that he needs must speak. 'Dear child,' he began, but she made a ^'esture so eloquent of fatigue and pain that "•is tongue failed him for pure pity. ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS 27 * To-morrow,' she breathed feebly. * I can bear no more. Come to-morrow.' * Ye know not,' he answered, ' what shall be on the morrow. For what is your life ? It is even a vapour that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away.' She made no response, and after a time he moved silently away. The girls in the ante- (iiamber ceased from their wliispered talk as he passed by them, and shrank back from him in awe and terror as he fell suddenly upon his knees and burst into an ecstasy of prayer in the words of a tongue unknown to them. His invocation finished, he arose, and mechanically adjusting his tattered woollen robe he walked with bent head and drooping shoulders into the great hall, where the throng of armed men and of men-servants and maid- servants fell back and made a way for him. He walked on, seeing notliing but the beaten earth at his feet, and that only with uncon- scious eyes ; but a voice at the door awoke him from his thoughts. ' Well, dog, are thy whinings answered ^ ' David raised his eyes and saw his arch- 28 ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS enemy Wenegog standing before him with a vessel of spar in his hands. * Who shall declare the counsel of the Lord before He hath spoken it ? * His glance fell to earth again, and he passed on. On Vreda's life hung his best hopes of the conversion of her people, and for a while his soul desponded within him. A murmured threat from one of the crowd 'f .warriors reached his ears, and he turned erect and terrible. His keen eyes sought and found the speaker., and he moved a single pace to- wards him. Tht; savage in his huge head-dress of nx:«)kin, with the great horns of the ox sprincring trom it on eithei' side, fell back cowering a.s the <>id man advanced. ' Yea/ said David. ' I shall die when God wills. But the hour is not yet/ Aud therewith he turned and sought his own [)ha,ce unmolested. That wild guard counted courai2"e as a commouDlace, but their valouj- was of deei) draughts t f mead, and the joy and clumour of battle with its music in the ■■J %.' blood. That valour of faith which bore up tJie old Saint when he stood unarmed ;n the ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS 39 presence of armed and hostile crowds, was outside their understanding, and smote awe into them when they looked upon it. Meantime Wenegog, foUowed by Barxel- hold his daughter and Feltor the king, had paced the great hall and the antechamber, and had reached the apartment of the queen. Since David's departure Vreda had fallen into a light sleep, and the trio entered so noiselessly that she did not awake at their coming. * She has hardly need of this,' said Barxel- hold in a whisper, indicating the potion. *She would rally without it,' the Druid answered in the same tone. ' Till now she has had nothing from which the strength of her youth might not well save her.' Feltor caught the meaning of the mur- mured words, and shuddered violently. Vreda stirred upon her couch, and his eyes were rivetted upon her face. She stirred again, and awoke, and her first glance encountered that of her husband. She lifted her arms to- wards him with pain, and a smile of ineffable tenderness lit her face. * Feltor,' she said. Her hands fell feebly 30 ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS back upon the panther skin, but her eyes still smiled, though with a pathetic look of pain. She misread the abject agony of his face for grief for her, and saw her own sentence in it. Had there been any hope of life the king could not have been so moved. Once more she raised her hands with a gesture of invita- tion. ' Feltor ! ' His limbs so shook beneath him that he fell upon his knees, and then hiding his face in both hands drooped down until his forehead touched the floor. Vreda smiled with a sublime despair, and little by little moved the weak hand which lay nearest; to him until her fingers touched him. He shivered at the caress, and she closed her eyes, tasting inwardly all possible sweetnesses and bitternesses which lay in that mute and eternal farewell. It was not yet perhaps the hour of farewell, but her heart spoke it at that moLient. A whisper, followed by the sound of a smothered girlish laugh from without, reached Wenegog's ear. He passed the hanging of skins, and came sternly upon the watchers. ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS 31 to He her jsses and the t at of a Iched * Is this a time for mirth ? ' he asked in a subdued voice of anger. * Awake that slum- bering fool and begone.* He re-entered the chamber, and the frightened girls awaking their companion stole silently away. Wenegog without a word placed the vessel of spar in the hands of Barxelhold, who accepted it tranquilly. Next, the Druid took from a recess in the wall a little cup of beaten gold, fantastically figured. In a corner of the apartment and by the outer wall bubbled a tiny runlet of water. A natural spring had been utilised here, and the water ran pure as crystal, breaking up within the wail, and finding its outlet through a hole pierced for that purpose. The old priest laved the cup deliberately, and shook it twice or thrice, dimpling the surface of the runnel with the falling drops. Then setting down the cup, he motioned silently to Barxelhold, and whilst in obedience to his gesture she held the vessel of spar in both hands towards him, he untied the thong of hide by which its covering was secured. Then, still with the same inexorable deUberateness, he poured a la ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS part of the potion into the cup, and without' a word placed it in his daughter's hand, and motioned with a forefinger towards the queen. Feltor had fallen further, and now fairly grovelled at the side of Vreda's couch. Her drooping fingers toyed with his hair, and she lay smiling mournfully towards the roof. Barxelhold stepped across the prostrate body t)f the king, and half kneeling beside the couch, and half reclining against it, insinuated one warm and supple arm between Vreda's neck and the panther's skin. The doomed queen turned and looked at her, and then looked upon the cup. * Why do you trouble me ? ' she asked with a mournful smile. ' There is no hope.' *Nay,' said Barxelhold, smihng back at her. * My father is wise in all manner of simples. Would he trouble you for nought ? * The look on the queen's face changed, and, half supported by Barxelhold's arm, she struggled into a sitting posture, and reached out one hand towards the Druid. ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS 93 * May I live ? ' she asked gaspingly. * Is there hope ? ' *The herbs I have chosen are of great power,' Wenegog answered with an assured calm. * They will not fail.* * Do you hear, Feltor ? ' cried the queen, with an almost frenzied joy which lent a momentary strength to her frame. * There is hope I Feltor I I shall not die. I shall not leave you, Feltor I ' Feltor groaned aloud, and writhed upon the ground as if he would fain enter it and be hidden there. ' Give me the cup,' said Vreda, supporting herself on both hands. Barxelhold smiling down upon her, with a look of many meanings, advanced the draught steadily to Vreda's lips, the warm supple arm wound about her victim's neck meanwhile. The cup was at the eager lips when a cry was heard at the entrance of the chamber, and a dark-haired child i f three or four years of age ran to the couch, climbed upon it, and threw both arms about the queen's neck, call- ing upon her as his mother. Barxelhold with- 34 ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS drew the cup in haste, lest its contents should be spilled, and looked venomously at the child. * I shall live for thee, httle one,' Vreda murmured, straining him to her bosom. * For thee and for thy father.' The hanging curtains stirred again, and a strange figure entered the chamber — a dwarf, thick-set and swarthy, but in the face well favoured. He was quick and keen of eye, and his lips had an unconscious humorous twitch as if they felt the savour of good things unspoken. He wore a head-dress of the skin of an ass's forehead, with the ears perked in- solently forward on either side, and on a thong running from an iron bangle on each upper arm to another on each wrist dangled a he- terogeneous assortment of feathered quills, which ga'^e a grotesque similitude of wings. He wore a kilt of skin from waist to knee, but his thick-set legs and his deep hairy chest vvere naked. * Thou ass-eared fool,' said Wenegog, turn- ing upon him. * What brings thee hither ? Wilt have the scourge and thy back made friends again ? ' ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS 35 )uld aild. reda 'For ind a .warf, well f eye, lorous things le skin ked in- \ thOTVg upper a he- quills, wings, ee, but y chest icr, turn- hither ? kk made * They know each other well,' said the dwarf, with a grimace half-deprecatory, lialf- humorous. ' Why should old friends be held asunder ? If my back must pay for the child's fancies, even so let it be. It has done it aforetime and will again.' The queen's head foil laxly on the arm which encircled her, and the child began to scream. He was a lusty Httle fellow, and his cries rang through the chamber. Wenegog, with a sweep of his white beard and his white robe, strode over the figure of the king, seized the weeping child, and made as if he would throw him into the dwarf's arms. He sur- rendered him to his guardian's care more gently than face and gesture had seemed to promise. / * Get thee gone I * he muttered wrathfuUy through his beard. * Wouldst slay the queen with the child's brawHng ? ' The dwarf with both arms about the crying child went out comforting him. The noise of weeping came piercingly for a moment or tw^o, and gradually faded into distance until it was heard no more. Barxelhold lowered Vreda's D 2 wttmimmimmi^ 36 ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS head to the pillow, balancing the cup, lest any of the devilish brew should be wasted. Then there was silence whilst one might have counted five score. Vreda's eyes opened and her lips moved. Barxelhold bent her ear to listen. ' The draught.' Barxelhold smiled and nodded, raised the helpless head, and setting the cup to the Hps, tilted it gradually until the last drop had gone. Vreda shuddered, and the girl, rising swiftly to her feet, let fall her victim's head and the empty cup at the same instant. The metal tinkled loudly as it fell on a space of the hard-beaten earth between the scattered skins, and Feltor looking wildly up, saw a splendid horror and triumph in the murderess's face. He knew that the thing was done, and stag- gering to his feet went swaying and reeUng towards the curtain. Wenegog laid a heavy hand upon his breast- * Coward ! ' cried Barxelhold. * "Where go you with that tell-tale face? Art a man?* She moved in a passion of victory and scorn, seized a great tankard and plunged it bodily "% ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS 37 '« stag- into an open granite jar of Gallic wine, and held it out to him. ' Find a heart there I ' she cried. Her hand reeked with the purple wine, and she stood before him with blazing eyes. Feltor took the tankard and drank with animal noises, greedily. He emptied the vessel, plunged it back into the jar and drank again. ' What is this ? ' said Vreda, writhing on the couch. * Feltor ! I am burning I I am dying I ' * Ay ! ' said Barxelhold, standing over her couch in a cold rage. * Surely ! You are dying, Vreda.' ' Feltor I ' shrieked the queen. ' Feltor I My Feltor I Help me ! ' *Thy Feltor I' said Barxelhold, letting loose the devil in her soul. ' How came he thy Feltor ? Of whom didst steal him, Vreda?' The arch-Druid, stooping for the fallen cup, and groping for it hither and thither in the shadow of the couch, looked up and laughed with a cold and mirthless approval lirii-— IITf I 38 ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS of the question. When his hand touched the cup he arose tranquilly, and taking both it and the bottle of spar to the little runnel of clear water, washed them there with a busi- nesslike composure. ' Thf^ poor tribal chieftain pleased the queen's eyes,' said Barxelhold, mocking her victim. * The fool must needs take greatness when it came to him, but left his heart behind. Thinkest he loved thee, perchance ? Not he I Love thee, thou thing of stone ! ' The queen struggled dreadfully to rise, but her strength failed her. She turned her glance on Feltor, who hid his face in his hands and, averting his head, supported himself against the wall. From that moment her gaze did not leave him, save when in some spasm of extreme pain her eyes closed. Once, and once only, Feltor dared to look at her. Her glance spoke so much of what was strange and awful that it pierced his soul. There was a wild wonder in the look, and an anguish beyond words. Barxelhold railed and mocked, and the old Druid stood smiling. Suddenly he moved ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS J9 id the oth it nel of busi- id the ig her gatness Dehind. Jot he I ;o rise, led her hands himself nt her n some Once, at her. strange ere was nguish I I forward. The queen had lain motionless for a minute. He set his hand upon her shoulder. The body yielded to the weight he leaned upon it and the head swayed round. He looked quietly upon her for a little space, and then turning, walked from the chamber. Barxelhold's railing had ceased and there was silence. The old man's solemn voice rose in the wide hall beyond : * • * Listen, sons and daughters of There.' In the dead silence of the inner room, the faint rustle and murmur of the crowd was heard clearly. The voice of Wenegog rose again : ' Your queen is dead.* Then there was a pause, and, after it, a great clamour of wailing. Feltor turned and looked up. Barxelhold hurled herself upon his breast with a trium- phant cry : ' My Feltor i Mine I * md the moved X 40 ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS CHAPTER m. These things the released soul of Vreda the queen heart! and saw. On a sudden, when the body was racked with pains unspeakable, and the sick fr^me was filled with loathings of itself, there had arisen within her a pang so dreadful that it may barely be thought of, and thereafter fell upon her a most heavenly peace and rest. Barxelhold's voice railed on, but it was powerless to afflict her. And whilst yet she wondered at the calm which had come upon her, the voice of Wenegog spoke in the outer hall. ' Listen, sons and daughters of There ! Your queen is dead I ' And Vreda knew that this was the secret of her rest. She looked down upon ine fleshly h^use she had inhabited and was toucked with a ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS 41 2da the , when akable, athings a pang ight of, eavenly iled on, And which ^enegog There ! b secret y h*>use with a cold and shadowy pity. She saw Feltor shiver beneath Barxelhold's guilty embrace, and she knew that she had forgiven them both already. Barxelhold's murderous joy and Feltor's lust and fear were as real to the soul of the queen as their bodily presence before her. She stretched out hands which were the ethereal presentment of those which lay motionless in death, and with an impulse of dispassionate pardon and farewell she laid them on the heads of the living. They started guiltily^ apart, staring upon each other with a vivid horror, and whether she were rapt away from them, or they from her, she knew not. They were gone, and but for the new and as yet strange calm and quiet, all was gone. And there was neither sound nor silence, nor hght nor dark, nor heat nor cold, nor height nor depth, nor place, nor anything save that self which existed and was at peace. Then out of this empty negation grew a something palpable to the soul as the hving hand is palpable to the living hand, and Vreda beheld (as it were) a woman of this world, nude, and of a lofty and tranquil coun- \ 4a ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS \ i tenance. And being new to her estate Vreda would have spoken, asking of the woman many things, but here there was no language or need of language, and the soul of the queen knew that the woman had answered : *Ask, and what I know shall be made known to you.* And Vreda desired within herself to know who the woman might be, and thereupon she knew that in old days the woman had been a queen in Heracleon, and that her husband had slain her. Vreda's soul thought, seeing that the soul of the woman was very beautiful : *That is as a bond between us, for I also was slain by my husband's will.' And the soul of the woman answered in the soul of Vreda : ' Thou art fairer than I, and it shall be as a bond.' Then Vreda was aware of more than calm and rest, and she loved the fair soul before her, and for a while they were as one, with a great sweetness of contentment. And Vreda learned within herself by the / ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS 43 thoughts of the other that the woman had left the earth for nigh three hundred years of earthlv time — for here measurement of time was not — and had not until now encountered so dear a companion. And desiring to know the things of her estate, she learned from her that had been queen in Heracleon that there was for them neither space nor place, nor sight nor hearing, but that the dwellers in that estate were aware of each other when they desired it. Shape was not, yet it grew to the perception of the spirit, and where it had come about that there was love be- tween souls, they met for the mere thinking of it. Then, pondering upon these things and asking whether or no there were many souls in the same estate, she was aware of multi- tude upon multitude, and nation upon nation, and age upon age, of all peoples upon the earth, and all worlds that people the heavens. And they intermingled with each other and passed through one another. But when Vreda pondered upon other things, it was again as if these souls were not. 44 ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS And inquiring of the name of her cot/i- pttnion, she knew that it had been Kalyris. Then, sojourning in that estate, Vreda communed with many spirits, but with none so gladly as with the soul of Kalyris. And there were some, of whom to be aware was a shrinking of the soul — the spirits of things that had done ghastly deeds in early worlds whereon the light of God had not shined. It came to pass when she was with Kalyris that a yearning fell upon her, and that the thoughts of Kalyris strove to translate it. For the thoughts of Kalyris made themselves known to the thoughts of Vreda, after the manner of their being, saying : ' There is an estate whereof I know and I know not. This I know, that all souls that enter therein are blessed, and their longings are appeased. There be in our estate who have borne it upon me, that a sacrifice was appointed from the beginning whereby all souls might enter that glory. There is no hollow of bygone time nor any abyss of time to be, in any world which has fallen from the hand of the Maker of all things whereto the ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS 4i sacrifice reaches not. And when Time was the sacrifice was accomplished between my time and thine. And the fruit of the sacrifice Is that all souls that live in all worlds shall grow toward the likeness of the beauty of him that was sacrificed, and shall enter into that glory when they are worthy to be beheld. ' And there is one who in the tongues of men is called Michael, and in the tongues of the dwellers in other worlds by niany names, and in the thoughts of them that speak not, l)ut think one unto another, by thoughts not to be interpreted. And in his countenance there is an exceeding great glory, passing the glory of the sun at noonday. And he visiteth this estate when his Maker comnuiiidcth, and the light of his countenance sliinetli upon many, and unto them that it shineili upon is made known tliat they may ask the boon thoy will. And the boon that is craved of all souls is that they may be with him unto whose like- ness they have grown.' Then Kalyris knew that this was not yet the answer to the yearnings of Vreda. And Vreda's soul rested hungry and un- 46 ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS I * satisfied, until upon a sudden she knew that her desire was to see her child, and the desire being known to her grew into an agony. Then she marvelled that from the hour of her death she had done aught but long for the child, for she could net know that all things were ordained for her. The agony grew in the soul of Vreda until it would no longer be re- sisted, for thus in that estate it is ordained. And for a while she fought with what she knew not, and was in terrible travail, till the pain of her longing was victorious and she beheld the child as it were with mortal eyes. And she knew that it had been granted to her for a moment to leave her estate, and to re turn to the bounds of time and place. The child Wankard lay weeping alone. He was nigh upon two years older than when she had last embraced him. The hut wherein he lay was bare to a pitiless sky, and the wind howled in the crevices of it. The floor was sodden, and the child was stretched upon it without covering. He was wounded and bleeding, and the soul of his mother strove in vain to be of comfort to him; and with ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS 47 that the vision allowed her was at an end, and she returned to her own estate, remem- bering what she had seen. Then it came to pass with the soul of Vreda that the pain of her yearning was yet sorer than it had been, and when she held communion with Kalyris there was nothing but this thought of between them. And again she fought with what she knew not ; and the torture of her travail was yet more terrible, till the pain of her longing was victorious. And in the space which was dotted to her she saw that her people were m misery, and that many of the followers of David were tortured and in bonds, and that Feltor ihe king and Barxelhold the queen rioted in the shedding of blood. And there was great compassion within her for the king and for the queen, and for the things which should befall them afterwards ; and the space allotted to her and the vision permitted caine to an end, and she returned again to her own estate, remembering what she had seen. And, as it were, upon a sudden there w^as a mighty gathering of the souls that were in 48 ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS that estate, and the souls were aware one of the other. And they were of all peoples, of all worlds, and of all times that have been, a multitude beyond number. Then Vreda knew from the knowledge of them that were about her that the coming of the Messenger of Light was expected, but as yet there was neither light nor dark. Then it was as if there were a beginning of light, and with the beginning of light a begin- ning of darkness. And the light grew to an exceeding glory, and the darkness to a hor- ror of darkness. And the glory dwelt upon thousands that* no man might number, and the horror of the darkness upon thousands of thousands that no man might number. And the glory dwelt upon Vreda, and she knew that her boon would be granted unto her. And her soul agonised, and the voice of the agony of her prayer ascended : *Let me return to the earth, whereon I wrought evil in the days of my life, and let me lead my people to the truth.* And behold there was before her another multitude, and the faces of the multitude ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS 49 were bright mth peace. And many in their midst beckoned imto her, and she knew that there was no grief among them. Yet she agonised the more, and the voice of the agony of her prayer ascended : * Let me return to the earth and lead my people to the truth.' And lol the multitude was not, and she stood clothed in flesh upon the earth. ■ ^ " '1 Ul !i^. 50 ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS CHAPTEE IV. The lusty summer sun was shining on the woods of Surfled, and the air was full of the hoarse music of horns. Deep in the forest, in a natural glade, Barxelhold, beaming with coquettish graces, made her throne on the prostrate body of a wild bull, slain an hour earlier in the chase. A light shawl of Cyprian wool formed her robe, fastened on the hip and on the shoulder by golden clasps. Over the right shoulder a leopard skin was brought across the body and fastened around the waist by a broad band of red hide. The woollen robe opened at the right hip and showed a rounded limb encased in strips of soft deerskin held together by laced thougs, and from knee to ankle embraced by greaves formed of split ox-horn. Her Httle feet were covered with soft red liide, bound by thongs ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS 51 of the same colour. The left breast and both arms were bare, and her bright yellow hair flowed about her shoulders. A cap of fine red-dyed hide edged with a circle of gold crowned her with a careless and saucy grace. A pyramid of dead game, wild ox, deer — red, fallow, and roe — boar, wolf and bear, rose intermixed pell-mell behind her, and the glade was filled by groups of huntsmen and beaters. Here were half-a-dozen wild fel- lows, tanned and bearded, holding each a leash of huge brindled bull-dogs, big as the mastiff of to-day, brutes with broacl white toes and black square muzzles, fierce and silent. There was no bell-mouthed music where these beasts ran, for they chased and killed their quarry without a sound. Here, at rest, one would yawn now and again, and one would growl, but out of mere contentment and the joy of a full stomach. The men who liad charge of them wore a sort of rude uniform to indicate their office, a kilt of boarskin, a head- dress of the same, with the savage curved tusks of the beast gleaming on either side the head, and a short spear and a bull's horn £ 2 Si 0N£ TRAV&LtEk kMTURNS r slung right and left by ropes of bark across the naked shoulders. The boar huntsmen carried short spears, the bull huntsmen wore kilts of the red hide of their quarry, and bore weapons which were a combination of axe and lance. The nets- men bore long nets of stout bark rope and thong. Here and there in the crowd, em- ployed for mere purposes of burden, wera serfs, prisoners of war from other nations, whose condition was proclaimed by the iron collar worn about the neck. Bending over Barxelhold was a personage who, for his time and place, was something of a dandy. His attire was a curious blending of Roman civilisation and British barbarism. He was clad in a tunic of the Eoman cut, of yellow wool trimmed with square lappets, with an embroidered edge of blue. Over the tunic he wore a cincture of polished brass studded with silver stars, and the brass sheath of a short Roman sword clanked gently against this as he moved. He wore knee-caps of metal, greaves of red leather, and sandals of wood, the red straps of which were en- ONK TRAVELLER RETURNS 53 nched with silver. The most distinctively native note in his costume was the wolfskin head-dress which crowned his gold-red hair. His locks were braided on either side his head, and the plaits fell backwards over his shoulders. This was Osweng, chief of the Lennian nation, then subjugated by the Eomans, and held in much contempt by their hardier neighbours. He and Barxelhold .were near each other oftener than Feltor cared to know, and the king with his broad back planted against an oak tree, and an untasted horn of ale lifted half-way to his lips, lowered upon the pair with a sidelong look of jealous)^ The young Osweng, with many affectations of posture, fanned the queen with a leafy oak branch, and murmured compliments with such posings and glancings as he had seen employed by Eoman gallants within the garrisoned walls of Deva. Barxelhold shot arch glances at him, or, if the murmured compliment were too open even for the full- flavoured fashion of the time, turned away with mock shyness. 54 ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS '■ 1 Feltor, lowenng more and more, lifted the horn to his lips, emptied it, still glaring sideways at his wife and the foolish suitor, and then with a savage gesture hurled it away. Not far from the queen and Osweng sat a group of hard-bitten and sinewy old warriors at the end of their forest meal. Among them was one Roedweg, a giant of a man, with a beard of tawny grey, eyes like a hawk's and a nose like the hawk's beak. * Look ye there,' said Roedweg, who was a man of privilege, and spoke his mind when and where he would. He flung a great hairy bare arm in the direction of the young Osweng with a broad gesture of disdain. ' Nowadays they call that a man. Plaiteth himself like a woman, and loveth fighting as I love drouth. Before There, the land is coming to be nothing worth. The lads piping small like the lasses, and cutting of their beards to look womanly. Fellows that will not drink to their peg at a dinner nor risk their skins in fight. Where be the lads I knew in youth ? The crows are lusty and shiny over many a score of them. Feast is well enough. Who loveth a feast It ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS 55 after a fight better than I? or, for matter of that, before it? But all feast and no fight?* He wrinkled his tough old muzzle in disgust. * Who hath drunk all the mead ? Give me the mead, Doedek, lest I smite thee over that bald scalp of thino. Ha I Hast fangs yet, old wolf-dog! Why, I love thee for it. Wouldst fight ? Nay — hit something older or younger than I be.' Now all this, as the privileged old war- hound meant it to be, was audible alike to Barxelhold and Osweng. The queen laughed mischievously as her courtier changed colour, and transferring the oak bough to his left hand laid the right upon the embossed hilt of his short sword. * Once on a while,' proceeded Eoedweg, grimly noticing this gesture, and vfinking on the attentive circle, ' a chief bore a long sword, and it was held for a sign of his rank. Now as honour shorteneth they shorten the blade. And look ye, lads, of all things loathly under the clouds this new way with women is the worst. Who talketh to his ale- horn before drinking? " Dear ale, I am athirst, I> ' 56 ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS and dear ale, thou art sweet, and sweet ale, 1 do desire thee." Drink, and have done I I am mad at this muddling of the women's heads with speeches. The woman is the man's prize, and hath been ever, save when the man- fool dippeth and braideth and adorneth him- self, and will not please the woman-fool out of his manlihood but by falling into her likeness. It was ever so, lads, I tell ye, from the days of the gods downwards — since Odan tripped There on the greenf/Ward and there was a beginning of Britons.' ' With this the huge old war-dog was aware that all eyes in the circle were bent laughingly on something behind him, and ere he could turn his head a soft warm arm slid down by his ear, and embracfid his grizzled old throat below the tawny grey beard, and gently with a series of mild per- suasive tugs coaxed his head backwards. And obeying thes^ gentle little tugs, with a countenance exceeding grim, he rolled half over and saw Barxelhold bending above him, and looking down upon him with mischievous relishing laughter in her eyes. At that Eoed- ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS $7 weg*s sweeping moustache parted on a sudden from his sweeping beard, revealing a cavern edged with teeth as sparkling white as a dog's, and he let out a great laugh Uke a thunder with no malice in it. Barxelhold tweaked his ear as if she would wring it from his head, but he laughed the louder, and at the last the queen boxed his ears with both hands together, at the which he laughed the louder yet. ' 'Tis strange, lads,' he said, with a sudden air of philosophy, * that any should take a pleasure in smiting that they cannot hurt. Now, what with drink from within and buffets from without, my head hath grown to be Uke oak, and it is a pity that such soft hands should be bruis«=id against it. For soft hands become the women-folk somehow. I know not how. Who hath drunk all the mead, Aidan ? Give it hither.' He drank and chuckled, and wiped his beard with the back of his brown hand. ' There will be no more days like the old days,' he said, when tlie queen had gone back to her place, and had resumed her conversa- tion with Osweng. * There is no pith in the 58 ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS lads' bones. Why, when I was held prisoner by the Roman legionary over at Deva yonder, the chief men among them would sing to stringed instruments of music, not like the harp — which is a thing a man may laugh at or rage over, or weep if it so please him — but a thing a maid might carry, and they sang to the women-folk, and the women-folk to them. And 'twas these who beat the lads of Lennia. I have been like to vomit at the thinking of it many a time. But I tell ye, valour is depart- ing out of the earth, and the old days are done with. They will never see our like again. We began with the gods, and every generation groweth punier. They will end with times when Heurtan would be held to be a giant.' Just then there was a stir in the crowd of huntsmen and beaters, and Barxelhold and Feltor, looking up at the same moment to seek 'he reason of it, saw the tall white-robed ii^iire of Wenegog advancing with a rapidity w^ucli took nothing from the stern dignity of his prer-ence. His eyes sought and found his daughici- and the king, and he raised a hand ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS 59 to each of them. Then he passed through the glade, and entering upon a forest avenue, awaited them there. The chieftains rose and gathered in groups, looking after him and the pursuing figures of their king and queen, for this sudden intrusion upon the kingly sport seemed to indicate something of importance. The Druid turned to await the arrival of Barxelhold and Feltor. * What tidings now ? * the king demanded. * 111 tidings," Wenegog answered. * The fool Heurtan hath taken Wankard again and again to the cave of the Blasphemer David. And last night both the fool and the child were sprinkled with water, and David spake incantations over them, and they are with him and of his heresy.* Barxelhold and Feltor exchanged glances, Feltor looking on his consort with menace and reluctance, and she regarding him with an aspect of triumph. * Who brought word of this ? ' asked Feltor gloomily. * I bring word of it,' answered Wenegog. *Let that be enough.' He turned to his 6o ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS U daughter. * There is n? child of tliy body,' he said with a momentary gentleness, ' and thus,' facing round on Feltor with a sudden cold wrath and resolve, ' this heretic spawn of thine might rule the land, and the work we did for the gods three years since might be undone. But there shall be an end of folly and an end of the blasphemers. Thirty and tliree of them were at their heathen rites last night, and thirty and one are in my hand already.' * No hair of the child shall be hurt fur- ther,' said Feltor doggedly. * Hast cl'ippled lim already.' * We speak not yet of the child,' Wenegog answered. ' Ileurtan hath borne him away, and hath saved himself for awhile.' ' Wankard is too young for the gods to be angered by him,' said Feltor. ' How knoweth he what hath been done with him ? ' * 1 think Feltor is half-smitten with this plague,' Barxelhold said smilingly. The king, with a face grown pale, turned upon her and searched her with his eyes. * Art tired already ? ' he asked. ' Wouldst ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS h\ iiave my life also, and take yonder jay from Deva in my platte ? ' Barxelhold, looking? at him with an enig- matical face, raised her eyebrows and slowly nodded twice or thrice, whether in wonder at this burst of jealousy or in confirmation of it he could not tell. * How know I,' muttered Feltor, * but the next horn I empty may be the last ? ' Barxelhold laughed with a sudden tanta- hsing brightness, and then taking his clenched hand in hers drew it, in spite of some resist- ance, around her neck and nestled to him, looking upwards to his gloomy eyes. ' Art a great fool by times, Feltor.' The soft contact of her supple figure thrilled through him, as it did always, and his eyes began to hunger at her. Wenegog wrinkled his keen nose in contempt and spoke again. ^luertan passed nigh by here with the child but a while agone. He hath made for one oi the heretic's fox-earths. Let them be found, and let an end be made of mad- ness. wm 63 ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS * As you will,' said Feltor, and turning, he called hoarsely upon Roedweg, who rose at his voice and approached with soldierly ala- crity. 'Heurtan the fool,' said Feltor, 'has borne away my cJiild, and it is thought that he has sought one of the hiding-places of the Christian. Take a band of a score. Find him and David likewise, and bring them bound to me. Let no harm cone to the child.' Roedweg drew his long sword in silence^ and with it signalled to one who stood amidst a group of huntsmen. The man raised a horn to his lips and sounded Eoedweg's call. Straightway all of the old war-dog's follow- ing rose and gathered together ; and he, going to meet them, chose the men he had need of and gave his orders. The men marched away into the forest avenues, north and south and east, and went rustling in altt;rnate shine and shadow through the un- dergrowth. Barxelhold sHpped from Feltor's arm, and without a word sauntered to where Osweng stood beside the slain wild bull. The king ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS «3 followed her awhile, but when she paused by Osweng he also paused, and seeing the horn he had thrown away from him awhile before, he stamped upon it with a passionate rage. Then, recovering himself from this outburst, he gave orders for the return. There was a clamour of horns and voices, aiid in a few minutes the broad sun-dappled glade had fallen back to the solitude and silence which of right belonged to it. TT I 64 ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS CHAPTER y. On the northward-facing coast of Wales stands a prodigious headland overlooking the Irish Sea. When There and Odan visited the world it was on this great headland that they set up their habitation, and the superstitious fahcy of the Coerleans held the ground sacred. On the bald brow of the hill the mortal re- mains of Vreda had lain for now three years uncovered from the airs of heaven. Her people had robed the dead form in silks from Phoenicia, and had hung gems of price about her neck, and set the regal circlet of gold upon her brow. They had built a pyramid of unhewn stones on the edge of the sheer preci- pice, and after solemn pomp of obsequy had left the dead to silence and decay. Twice daily, at morning and at evening, a Druid climbed the height and fed the fire ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS 65 which sliiml)ere(l beside the cairn. On quiet days the smoke of the pyre rose high into the air, and in tempestuous times it streamed wildly inland or seaward as the storm drove it ; and always it was a sign of sorrow to the people. Ai irregular intervals the solitude of the wild place of rest wai broken by the incursion of parties sent thither to hew wood for the funeral fire. There were stories among the Scots pirates, whose Httle vessels scourged the seas thereabouts — and who dwelt upon the northern Irish coast — to the purport that the queen lay amidst marvellous treasures, and they cast concupiscent glances towards the column of smoke which betrayed the neigh- bourhood of those fancied riches. They were daring enough for most things, but the most daring amongst them did no more than dream of the rich find which might have been made there, if the treasure had not been under the direct guardianship of the gods. After the death of Vreda strange things happened to David. His life had always been strange, and if the story of it were told to- ■'F i:f 66 ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS day it would sound as incredible as a fairy tale. But in all his spiritual experiences he had known nothing like the commanding impulse which controlled him now. That impulse drove him often to one thing that had no apparent purpose in it, but he obeyed without question, patiently atvaiting the time when the meaning of his own act should be made clear to him. Three months after the death of Yreda the impulse first came upon him. He awoke in the dead of night, and not knowing why or wherefore, he sought the place where the queen had been laid. He ascended the height with pain, stumbling often in the dark- ness, and reaching the foot of the cairn, he plucked a brand from the smouldering fire, swung it into the air until it flamed, and then bearing it in his right hand, climbed the rugged pile of ptones. The cairn was sunk at the top, and in the hollow lay the remains of Vreda. The Phoenician silks were torn to a thousand tatters by the beaks of carrion birds and the jewels lurking amid the rags flashed here and there in the light of the torch. The ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS 67 regal circlet, and the armlets and anklets of gold, lay tarnished amid the bleaching bones. David beholding this, wept aloud, but in a little while a strange quietude fell upon him, and he returned to his cave in a surprising peace of spirit. The impulse came upon him often, and he obeyed it the more willingly that his visits to the cairn were always followed by the same inscrutable calm. He had the greater need of this comfort because he found day by day the number of his adherents growing smaller, and because the few who were left to him met in imminent danger of death. Many had died already, hideously, and many others had fallen away from the new faith through fear. At last there was left to him a mere handful of some thirty souls, whereas in the life- time of Vreda he haii numbered his followers by hundreds. This remnant met in caves, and their pastor lived the life of a wild beast, a saint, and a hero. He fed on roots and berries, and drank the rank water of the fens. Night by night he changed his resting-place, and night by night he lay down not in fear F 2 'A 68 ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS but in hope that it might please God to bring his enemies upon him, and so take from his weary shoulders the burthen of a duty which had grown almost too heavy for him. News reached him often of the doings of Feltor and Barxelhold, who held heathen orgies in the house of Vreda, and of Wene- gog, who offered frequent human sacrifice to his gods. Thus the three years had gone by in grow- ing anguish and harassment, and the hopes he had once held for the increase of the faith in the land were almost dead v/ithin him. He sat alone at the mouth of a cave upon a hillside. The sun had set half an hour be- fore, but there was no refreshment in the air. which brooded heav^ and motionless upon the forest below him. There was a stormy glow in the west, and elsewhere the sky was livid. Not a bird chirped, or shy wild thing of the woods rustled the undergrowth. The silence sank upon his heart like lead. The forest stretched far and far away be- fore him like a green sea of arrested billows, and at its utmost rim a ragged line of black ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS cloud pushed up into the heavens as if of its own volition. No merest breath disturbed the txanquillity of tlie lower air, but the far- off' cloud climbed fast and poured up its black battalions north and south and west, em- bracing half the circle of the sky. Its gloom saturated the ^orest rim, and then sponged it out of sight, and the dark advance-guard wreathed and rolled and swayed and streamed in the fury of a tempest as yet inaudilvle. David was weary in soul and body, and as he watched the approaching storm the first sleep he had known for days fell upon him with a weight which he had neither w4sh nor power to resist. His head dropped heavily forward, his arms hung lax and motionless at his sides, and he sat like a statue of fatigue at rest. The first notes of the thunder threatened far away, and the first breath of tempest smote the trees and sent them shuddering and moaning. Swift lightnings split the dense blackness of the cloud, but the Saint neither saw nor heard. Suddenly, before a drop of i-ain had fallen -I ■f\ 70 ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS there arose a noise of rustling in the wood, as of some heavy body forcing a way through the undergrowth. It drew nearer and nearer to the cave, and at the moment when the heavens opened with one crash and deluge of thunder and flame and rain, Heurtan the jester burst from the wood carrying the child upon his shoulder. The sudden breaking of the storm so blinded him that for the moment he did not perceive the slumbering Saint, but bear- ing headlong on, he dashed into the cave, and setting down the child upon the floor, wrung the moisture frohi liis hair and eyes. Then breathing hard he stared about him, and started on beholding David, who sat with the wind-driven spray of the rain flying in upon him, unconscious. * Is he dead ? ' cried Heurtan aloud. He seized upon the old man's hand and found it warm, but the rain spray glittered on face and beard and naked feet, and the old man's solitary garment of torn woollen stuff was sprinkled with it like hoar-frost. The brawny dwarf passed an arm beneath his knees, and another about his waist, and, lifting the spare ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS 71 figure, gently bore it into the cave. The cliange of posture, softly as it was effected, ghot burning pains through the old man's joints, and he awoke, muttering and strug- gling against his bearer. * Have no fear,' cried Heurtan. ' Why art thou here ? ' asked David, as the jester helped him to his feet. He knew the voice, but the interior of the cave was black as night, and neither could see the other. A burst of thunder drowned Heur- tan's first words and made him pause. The wind scourged them even here, and bore the flying rain spray in wild eddies of mist, unseen but felt. 'All are captured,' Heurtan shouted, when the thunder had rolled away. The clanging of the wind about the cavern sounded like the clapping of innumerable wings. 'The queen's child and I are alone esoaped, and the chase is now afoot for us and thee.' David gave no answer. V Thj child wailed in the wet darkness, and Heurtan, sitting on the rocky floor beside him, took him to his arms. At moments the 7a ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS li: \: - lightning showed the inmates of the cave to one another. The Saint stood staring towards the grey veil of water at the cave's mouth which blackened constantly as the gloom of night fell deeper on the gloom of the storm. Over and over again the thick falling flashes revealed the gaunt figure and the absorbed unchanging look. Then on a sudden his place was vacant. The jester called on him, and hearing no reply arose and sought for him with groping hands. He explored every cranny of the walls, and traversed every foot of the uneven floor upon his hands and knees. Before Heurtan had convinced himself that David was no longer in the cavern, the old man had already struggled far up the steep hillside. That mysteripus and over- mastering impulse which had so often assailed him was again upon him, and this time with a force he had never felt before. An inward and untranslatable voice that would not be denied drove him to the resting-place of the queen, and his worn body, in spite of the fatigues which had but an hour ago lain so heavily upon it, was filled with a force ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS 73 which seemed more than natural. His rain- soaked vesture clogged his steps, the lightning and thunder seemed to flame and bellow about his very head, the wind buffeted and the deluge blinded him. But that imperious im- pulse from within upheld him, and he fought his way upwards in a mad breathless haste, often stumbling, sometimes falling, at times waist-deep in some wild watercourse, at times tangled in briars, and at times turned aside by some huge rock too precipitous to climb. At last, bruised and torn in every hmb, but as yet conscious of no pain, he reached the summit, and at that instant a great banner of lightning flamed out upon the darkness and waved wildly whilst a man might have counted three. Every fissure in the grey cairn, every outline of the uneven stones, and every blade of grass and patch of moss and leaf of fern that nature's hand had fostered there since the queen had been laid down to rest stood clear and distinct before him. It was as if the hght of heaven had cried to him with a living voice — Behold I 74 ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS He made his way to the foot of the cairn. The funeral fire, unextinguished but hall' blackened by tiie rain, winked redly in its crevices and hissed. He stumbled upon a branch that lay beside it, and seizing this he stirred the fire until it blazed again in defi- ance of the dense rain, and then drawing a great brand from it he ascended to the top of the cairn and knelt upon the edge. Another flaming banner floated out over all the heavens, and looking down whilst everything was clearer to sight than at broad noonday, he saw the tarnished gold and shining gems inch-deep in rain-si)otted water amidst a few soaked rags of silk. He saw the bare stones black with the water that filtered between their interstices, but not a remnant of the frame that the soul of Vreda the queen had worn was there. As he looked the swift light died swiftly, and he was left in the pitchy darkness of the night again. He waved the hissing brand he carried until it fiamed, and by its light ex- amined the open tomb anew. The gems were there, and the tatters of the funeral robe ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS y% and the darkened cirolew of gold — but these were all. A great and terrible awe seized upon him, and he knelt in expeetation of flonie unknown terror. But no voice spoke from within or without, and when he had strengthened his heart in prayer he descended from the cairn. And when he was but a little way from it the awe he had felt came back upon him with tenfold power, and the sense of a near pre- sence smote him with an extreme drend. In this trembling of the sonl he could not tell whether the presence were of good or evil, but he cried out upon it with a loud and hollow voice, demt^nding to know what it miglit be. And a voice answered him from the dark- ness : * I am Vreda I * ^ 76 ONh IRAVELLER RETURNS CHAPTER VI. On the eastern side of the v^oods of Surfled, between the forest and the estuary of the sea, lay a great tract of open grass grown land. Here nine-and- thirty enormous stones marked a circle. They stood a hundred yards apart or thereabouts, and allowing for the width of the stones themselves, the circle was thus a little more than two-thirds of a mile in diameter. The stones were un- trimmed, uneven in form and size, and of a purplish-grey tinge. At a distance of about four hundred and fourscore yards sprang an inner circle of thirteen stones only, and tliis inner circle was about four hundred and four- score yards in width. At its centre was yet another circle of less than a score yards in diameter, rounded b}^ nine-and-thirty stones no more than breast high, and with ample ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS 77 room for a man to pass between each two of them. Within this final circle the earth was bare and scarred with traces of fire, for in the symbolism of the circles the circle of the gods embraced the circle of life, and the circle of fife embraced the circle of death, and this inner rinj enclosed the place of human sacri- fice by fire. There were men at work here preparing for the great triennial festival to BeL The men were of the labouring order of the priest- hood, clothed in rough robes of sheepskin, mere bottomless sacks, which, supported by thongs across the shoulders, stretched from the armpits to the knees. About the waist each wore a broad belt of iron opening by a hinge and fastening with a bolt, and at the back of each belt was a ring through which were passed the thongs wherewith they tugged' their loads. Three men were within the fire-scarred enclosure, working with pointed trowels at the earth. A white-robed Druid with a chaplet of green oak leaves about his head and a wand of green ash in his hand stood looking on from without the 78 ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS circle, and the labourers sweated at the work beneath tlie taskmaster's eye. They were diii^^nng a ringed trench, and this being ah^eady excavated to the depth of a foot, showed a circle of closely-ranged projecting stumps, charred at the top and stoutly set in the ground. , Whilst this work was going on, other small groups were engaged in felling and trimminj? a number of youncr ash tre(^8 on the borders of the wood. Others with bundles of the slim trunks trailing behind them toiled painfully tovvai Is the centre circle. These as they arrived were ordered to assist in up- rooting the charred stumps, and as each stump was withdrawn it was replaced by a young ash trunk of some twelve feet in length. The rii g being completed, the dis- placed earth was restored and beaten down with rammers of \.ood. The fire-haVdened floor within was [)iled high with dry brush- wood, and upon this small logs and splittings, dry and green alike, were thrown, until the receptacle' formed by the ring of tree trunks was almost lilled. ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS 79 Here the first day's work closed, but with the morrow the labourers and their overseer were back again. The shm trunks were laced together basket fashion with green withes, and so formed into a firm circular wall. Then came a score of men, marching at a si v\ and even pace, and bearing upon their shoulders a huge structure of basket- work, some fmir yards wide at the base, of equal height, and slightly tapering towards the top. The bottom was stoutly floored with wa 'm •C^ %' (A ^ 1.0 IM 112.5 == '• IM |||||_Z2 I.I 1.25 !!■ e 1110 1.4 1.8 1.6 v2 ^ /2 % 'e2 ^: cTA 'm a (?i 0% ■" o 7 /A Photographic Sciences Corporation 2? VEST MAIN STREET WEBSTER, NY. 14580 (716) 872-4503 r c^ r ts ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS i III worried at it, standing about the hall, or reclining at half-length against the walls and the solid stone tables and benches. The women bore horns of mead and black beer amongst then^ and the feasters drank hugely, with laughter and shoutings. Whilst the feasting was at its height the sky grew" blacky an .1 the first rumblings of distant tempest made themselves heard above the noise of merrytaaking. The feasters paid no heed, even wnen the first heavy drops plashed down into the roofless hall. Cressets of fire burned here and there, and torches stuck into crevices of the wall or planted in the earth cast red splashes of light in their own immediate neighbourhood, and made the spaces between seem darker by contrast. The bards sang and played, half the roysterers joined in chorus or sang irrelevant ditties of their own, shrieks of simulated fear arose from one of the women as some grizzled old warrior haled her on to his knee and scored her check with his wiry beard, and oaths, jests, laughter, opposing airs, and the noise of sudden quarrel made a deafeninof hubbub. \m ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS Suddenly the thunder clove through it all, and the lightning flashed out blindingly. Cressets and torches looked bluiTed and dim between the flashes, and when the skies opened and the rain came down the women fled laughing and shrieking to their own shelter, and the men planting themselves to the leeward of the wall against which the tempest beat at its fullest force, carried on their merriment there as best they might. The rain, driven by the ;97ind, sprayed over the wall as if a sea were there, and the lightning showed the {:reat rebounding drops upon the floor Uke a dense host of tiny silver-clad dancers. Cres- sets, torches, and great roasting- fires hissed and blackened and died. Men made rushes from their partial shelter into the storm, and returned with drinking horns charged with mead and beer. Their comrades, half in rude good humour and half in brutality of greedi- ness, fought for the supply. One grey bard, mad with the excitement of the storm and the revelry that had gone before it, dashed into the midst of the hall and danced there, ;i > ,1 90 ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS \\- (■ ■ ,. yelling an improvised ode to the thunder whereto no man listened. In the sheltered chamber of the king and queen the feast went on uninterrupted. Feltor and Barxelhold sat in equal state at the head of the table, side by side, in chairs of massive oak strewn with costly skins. Feltor was sullen and silent, but Barxelhold beamed at her brightest, and evinced a mischievous delight at her lord's anger. Osweng sat next Barxelhold, but the king's eyes so cowed him that he was quite deserted of his airs and graces, and hardly dared even to answer her when she spoke to him. Seeing this, Barxel- hold embarrassed him with favours, serving him with her own fingers, drinking from his cup, touching his hand with hers when she desired to speak with him, and holding it there while she spoke. More than once Feltor had his hand upon his knife, and Wenegog sitting impassive below him laid a familiar grasp upon his knee and addressed him. Each time the king relaxed his hold upon the haft, and without paying heed to what tlie arch- Druid might say, turned to a young warrior ill.-. ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS 91 of the court whose business it was to replenish his cup, and who stood with it in readiness behind him. Feltor seized the cup and drained it, and then lounging with his bare elbow on the board and his bearded chin in his palm, glared at Osweng. His potations told at last, and the fier(5e gloom of his eyes grew filmed and purposeless. He fell back in Jiis chair and lay lax with closed eyes and arms loosely hanging. Osweng recovered his courage, and Barxelhold having frozen him with a sudden disdain, turned a laughing face upon her father. A sour smile crossed the Druid's face, and his lips opened for a sound- less laugh. Hints of the tempest drove in even here, between the curtain poles and .the roof. At the first peal and flash Barxelhold, feigning to be frightened, clung to Osweng, and he once more gaining boldness, began again to make love to her. Wenegog, with both arms on the table, looked across at them with a half-scorn- ful, half-amused toleration. The feast and the storm went on, both one and the other grow- ing wilder There was as little decorum with* ONE TRAVELLER RETURN:^ IP in the curtains which sheltered the royal ban- queting chamber as in the open hall beyond them. One reveller had thrown himself full length upon the bench beside the table, and a lady of the court sat perched upon his mid- riff, bending over him and pl,aying with his beard, whilst he laughed sleepily back at her. Beside him a mere slip of a girl with a face half-insanely alight with wine sat on a chiefs shoulder, brandishing an empty wine cup and singing, the chieftain meanwhile drinking away below with great composure, and listen- ing to the story of a bear hunt from his left- hand neighbour. Osweng had thrown himself upon the ground at Barxelhold's feet, and now lay looking up at her. She touched him twice or thrice with her foot, and once he ventured to seize it. The thunder split the heavens overhead, and seemed to crash among the very rafters of the hall, but it could but silence the din of revelry by overpowering it. The swish and pelt of the rain were heard in pauses, and the flash of the lightning ever and again paled the lamps and torches as its glare fled past ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS 9S the space bet^ween the roof and the curtain hangings. But without and within the tempest les- sened. Pale slow gleams of moonlight alter- nated with the swift glance of the storm, and the feasters were falling asleep, when the curtails were thrown suddenly apart, and Boedweg strode into the hall and advanced to the upper end of the table. He bore in his arms the child Wankard, who lay asleep in that strong cradle, his hair and raiment drip- ping heavily with rain. After their chieftain came half-a-dozen of his followers, who, push- ing Heurtan the jester into vhe chamber beiore them, stood near the cut^ain in a rude irreso- lution as if not well knowing whether to enter or remain outside. Wenegog and Barxelhold arose, but Boed- weg glanced at neither of them. Shifting his light burden to his left arm, he stretched out his hand and seized on a full horn of wine. He emptied it at one draught, and returned it resoundingly to the board. 'Is this hunting of babes and dwarfs fit work for men ? ' he asked growlingly, as he 94 ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS ■I i h. passed his hand across his lips. ' A score of warriors sent forth to make prey of a child and a fool.' *Hast found the arch-heretic?* Wenegog demanded. 'Of a feast-day, too, of all days in the year,' Eoedweg grumbled, disdaining the question. ' And that among the meats which is not charred or sodden hath been cleared by this pack.* He kicked together with his foot a heap of the skins which lay loose about the floor and set down the sleeping child upon the couch thus formed. Wenegog moved forward and stooped as if he would lay hands upon the boy. * Nay,' said Eoedweg, * that is king's meat. He is not for thy maw.' 'Barest speak thus to me, dog?* de- manded Wenegog. ' Dare ? * laughed Eoedweg. * Naught dare I, nor ever dared. But spite o* that, who lias the lad shall fight me for him, be he god or fiend-^r Druid.' Wenegog looked dearly at him, but the ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS 9S old man, with his feet astride across the child, had reached out a hand to the table and seized a remnant of cold venison, and now stood tranquilly munching it. The Druid passed him in hot scorn, and sweeping to the far end of the chamber stood over Heurtan. •Where is thy master? Thy teacher of lies ? Where is he ? * The jester returned no answer, and Wene- gog, gazing passionat^ely about him, seized a crystal tankard and struck him heavily upon the head with it. Heurtan swayed somewhat and raised his hand to the wound. * Where is he ? * cried Wenegog. Heurtan was silent. The storm had rolled away. The few revellers who were still awake stared drunkenly at the scene, and a voice from the outer hall hiccoughed a stave of a song of war. 'Where is he?* Wenegog cried again, with the tankard poised high in his right hand. A strange chant, jubilant and wild, rose outside the palace walls. Heurtan alone, of all who listened, had heard the strain before. n 'f! ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS His face lightened with an exalted smile, and the hand that had pressed upon his wound was raised with the gesture of one who listens. The strange wild jubilant chant came nearer — passed the palace — died away. * I am the resurrection and the life : he that believeth in Me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: and whosoever liveth and believeth in Me shall never die.' * Who are these ? * the arch-Druid asked. His hand had fallen as he listened. * They aie followers of the Master whom 1 follow,* Heurtan answered, breaking his silence. 'Then follow thou them/ said Wenegog. " Bind hiin, and take him with the rest.' He nodded slowly at the jester, his white beaj'd waving up and down. • Shalt be rai'e and warm on Bel's day. Take him away.' ii'! M w. 'iii;i t \ ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS CHAPTER Vn. It was the afternoon of Bel's day. ^dway between the ring of thirteen stones which represented the circle of life, and the inmost ring of thirty-nine stones which represented the circle of sacrifice by fire, a great plat- form of wood had been erected. This plat- form rose to a height of six feet from the ground, and at both ends and from the side facing towards the huge image of wickerwork was approached by seven steps. At the centre of it was placed a stone of ^reen ser- pentine, curved at top, the squared sides of it facing due north and south. On either side of the ptone, and at a distance of some three or four yards, was a raised chair spread with skins. Ou the turf between the platform and the inmost circle of stones was built an altar, on which a sacrificial fire already burned. 98 ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS rfl In the enormous grasry ring which lay between the first and second circles, thousands of people were gathered, and from every side the crowd came pouring in. Here was all the din and tumult of a fair. Sellers of mead and ale, of roast meats and bread, and of a beverage of thin soured beer mingled with honey, much prized in thirsty weather, bawled their wares. Druids sold bits of dried hairless skin traced with cabalistic signs for amulets against death and disaster, little wooden tab- lets for success in the chase, the dried eyes of wolves, all guaranteed three years old at death, to secure good fortune in love^ and bored trifles of unpolished jet and crystal to ward off the aches and pains of sickness. At rapid receipt of custom sat a fat old Druid, ii]» wolfskin kilt and chaplet of oak leaves (freshly bound that morning but al- ready flaccid and drooping in the summer sun), with three copper bowls before him, and in each bowl a bound bunch of southernwood twigs. The bowl at his left hand held water known to be drawn from the sacred spring of Weeshdaer; the next, water from the same ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS source, but doubly sanctified by the special blesaiDg of the guardian Druid of the spring : and the bowl at his right a yet more efficacious benediction, since it was not merely drawn from the holy spring and blessed by its pre- siding priest, but had served to lave the hands of the arch-priest himself after high sacrifice. To him came all manner of people with a)! sorts of gifts, demanding all kinds of blessings. Here an anxious mother brought a sick uild, and at the p'-'ce of a sheepskin bought the cheape«?t, of the fat Druid's blessings, and had the child saved of all future risk of convul- sions in teething. Here a man drove a barren ewe to get her blessed into fecundity, and paid a roughly shaped ingot of copper. Here a girl, blushing and laughing and trying to hide from the spectators what she brought, held jealously in both hands a brac^ of dried wolfs eyes, and to make assurance doubly sure, paid an ingot of silver to have them each twice blest with the richest water. There a fellow limping from an old wound made by a poisoned arrow two years earlier, and obstinately refusing to be healed. Behind PT ; > lOO ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS ^i him came two serfs bearing a 3age of wicker, in which a great auk pecked and flLttered furiously. The Druid sprinkled the man busi- ness-like, and with a wavo of his hand indicated the spot in which the bird should be bestowed. His assistants herded a heterogeneous flock of sheep, goats, screaming wild geese, and loud- quacking wild duck, and heaped up mounds of dead mallard, teal, and wood-pigeon, and piles of skins, in readiness for transport when the fair which preluded the sacrifice should be over. Here and there, with an attentive circle about him, a bard harped and » sang, and bursts of wild applause or shouts of laughter followed his story, according as he told of the deeds of gods and warriors, or related the ratfy adventures of Sarnaku. Here and there again a fool-dancer, in his ochr«^meared kilt and head-dress, with face and body lined with ochre and charcoal, sprang and contorted for a reward of meat and beer. The women held up their male children — who from the earliest age were permitted to be present at the fes- tival — high over the heads of the crowd, that ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS loi they might witness the mad antics of the painted fool. > The crowd discussed the coming sacrifice, and such as had intimately known any of the Christian captives were questioned and listened to with interest. ' There is Elkama/ said a woman who had an attentive knot gathered about her. ' She is to be bufned to Bel to-day. Eight glad am I of it, for * * For the men thought her likely to look on,* a lad of twenty or thereabouts broke in, laughing. * Ay,' said the woman. * Likely enough to look on ! Loedfel was after her. He'll hardly be in love with her to-morrow. When she's gone, an honest woman may have a chance again.' The blast of a solitary horn sounded hoarsely shrill over the tumult of the crowd, and there were cries for silence everywhere. The dancers stopped in their rapidest whirl, the bards suspended their song in mid flight, the vendors of meat and al« ceased to sell, and the fat Druid emptiedHhe con^-uits of his IW i :l 102 0N£ TRAVELLEP RETURNS m\: three bowls into one, thereby destroymg the separate virtues of each, and, having poured the water upon the ground, handed the bowls to an attendant and waddled away. Absolute stillness and the silence of an expectant awe reigned where a moment earlier all had been noise and motion. Then arose the pomp of a barbarous music of horns, triangles, and voices, and the crowd, first pressing towards the sound, swayed apart as it advanced and made a broad lane for the musicians. These were robed in white and wore cinctures of copper. Behind them came others similarly attired, sprinkling water, having in the one hand a bowl and in the other a sprig of southernwood. Then followed a band sprinkling rye and barley, and after these at a measured interval came Feltor and Barxelhold, at the head of a picked band of warriors led by Eoedweg. Next, pacing one by one, came the priests of the Seven Terrors : the priest of the death by Flame, the priest of the death by the Knife, the priest of the death by Poison, the priest of the death by torture, the priest of the ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS 103 its death by the Wave, the priest of the death by Hunger, and the priest of the death by Thirst. They wore chaplets of the oak, which had been steeped in blood and seared in fire ; and as they passed, calm and slow, the people shrank and bowed before them. At the heels of the last Terror came the captives, closely guarded, pinioned at the wrists, and rolling wild eyes hither and thither on the crowd and upon each other. Some among them walked erect with calm faces, and some even sanj^, though the guards struck such of the singers as were within their reach upon the lips to silence them. After the captives followed the priestly heralds of the Seven Joys. Their brows were wreathed with oak, they were robed in white, and girt at the waist by a broad scarlet band. They walked in single file : the herald of the joy of the Chase, the herald of the joy of War, the herald of the joy of Love, the herald of the joy of the Feast, the herald of the joy of Fertility, the herald of the joy of Duty to the king, and the herald of the joy of Obedience to the gods. ^ F 104 ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS I' i Next came a body of the higher order of Druids, their rank indicated by the breadth of the scarlet cincture worn by each ; and be- hind them Wenegog alone, draped in com- plete scarlet, walking with bent head, and bearing in his right hand the sacrificial knife. The crowd lingered long before it dared to close in upon the wake of that awftil figure. The musicians who headed the procession took their places at the ends of the platform, and the sprinklers of water and rye and barley drew up beside them. Feltor and Barxelhold mounted the platform and took in silence the seats prepared for them. Roedweg and his band also ascended, and stood grouped be- hind the king and queen. The priests of the Seven Terrors passed in front, and, halting, formed a line at the left side. The captives were driven in a herd between the sacrificial fire and the figure of wickerwork, and the heralds of the Seven Joys ranged themselves on the right. The Druids in white and scarlet look their stand to right and left of the king and queen, and Wenegog mounted the centte ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS 10$ steps and stood by the ctone of sacrifice, knifo in hand. There was silence for a space, and then a blast, long and loud, was blown upon a horn. Then another and another, until seven blasts were blown. The crowd began to surge to and fro with vague suppressed murmurs, and here and there a sharper cry of eagerness or. of pain. In a while it became evident that seven lanes were opened in the dense crowd, partly by the volition of the people and in part by the efforts of Druids and soldiers. Then again there was silence for a space, and those upon the platform could see that the edges of each lane were agitated as though blown upon by opposing winds. The people knelt and bowed as if in extremest awe, and the lanes closed slowly until from each there emerged upon the circle a maiden nude from head to foot, bearing in her hand an unlighted torch. These were the firstborn daughters of seven great chieftains^ and they came in the name of the seven daughters of There : Lernoe, the goddess of Atonement; Hemdamu, the goddess of Prayer ; Wor, the goddess of Fe- idS ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS cnndity ; Tenkomba, the goddess of Sincerity ; Aieshtar, the goddess of the Fruits of the Earth; Somb, the goddess of the Odour of Sacrifice; and Nelbaerkhu, the goddess of Warmth. In contrast with the swarthy and sunburned limbs and faces of the rougher sort, the bodies of these more delicately-bred women shone ivory white. Some of them walked as if they were conscious of the sacrifice of modesty to which they were or- dained, but the others seemed proud of it, for it was only to the fairest and noblest and most innocent that the awful task upon which they were engaged was given. That task was to ignite the fire within the wicker figure when it should be filled with its appointed human victims. They ranged themselves between the group of captives and the altar, each one laying in the sacrificial fire the torch she carried, and as the flames caught the torches an aged Druid set upon the curved serpentine block, behind which Weuegog stood knife in hand, an adder, bound upon a stout withe. With a slow and deliberate stroke of the knife the ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS 107 arch-priest slit the grey, belly of the reptile, and the aged Druid descending the steps threw it upon the sacrificial fire. Then another, grave and hoary, laid upon the block a lizard, also bound upon a withe, and the knife having opened the creature from throat to tail, it also was thrown upon the fire. Next a wood- pigeon was sacrificed, next a hare, next a lamb, and then a doe. Then there was a renewed sway and mur- mur in the assembly as the gathered worship- pers anticipated a sacrifice more awful. A wild and continued wail of terror and appeal burst from the ranks of the captives as their guards fell upon them, and bound them wrist to ankle. The vast crowd stood silent with craned necks and staring eyes. One of the Mernogaels, more stalwart than his comrades, found courage in the abyss of his despair and fought madly, but the rest submitted without a struggle. From the midst of the captive group one man was driven unpinioned towards the plat- form. It was Heurtan the jester. At the foot of the steps he paused and looked about io8 ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS yi ■ ) him, but there wa^ no hope of succour, and in the looks of the i^housands who regarded him, no single glance of pity. His guards scourged him forward, and he mounted. The dreadful silence was broken by a murmured incantation fromWenegog. The Druids about him repeated it. The sound swelled right and left among the crowd — a deep hoarse mut- tering : Lord of the Nethergloom, Scourger of fiends and men. This to appease thee. Swoot is the blood-savour. Sweet to thy nostrils the burning, Master of Evils. A man with a gleaming knife between his teeth climbed the figure of wickerwork, and having reached the top sat down there staring about him, and tried the edge of the blade upon his thumb. Below him the guards seized upon the victims and threw them heaped one upon another at the foot of one of the poles where the rope of bark-fibre drooped ready. A score of hands were at either end of the rope, and a Druid stood near ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS 109 the writhing heap of victims with a double handful of thongs of leather. The four who had driven Heurtan to the sacrificial stone seized him one by each hand and one by each foot, and casting him back downwards on its concave surface knelt and strained him there. The seven maidens raised their lighted torches from the fire of sacrifice, and passing between the stones of the inmost circle placed themselves at equal distances about the figure of Bel. The arch-Druid raised the dripping knife. The muttered prayer to the god of Terror had died away and a voice sprang out of the stillness. *Holdr Wenegog looked down and saw David standing in the space between the platform and the fire. * The hour is propitious,* he said, lowering the knife slowly. *Bel has chosen his own sacrifice. Bring him hither.* A score of men started down the broad stairs and paused stock still midway. For at the same instant they were all aware of a no ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS M I' woman robed in a mantle of skin who stood beside the Saint, and to the eyes of every one who looked upon her she bore the likeness of Vreda who had been queen among them. The knife fell from Wenegog's hand and quivered in the beam at his feet. The woman mounted the platform and stood before him. He glared upon her with his head thrown backward, and his white beard jutting out towards her. Her face was no longer the face of Vreda, but it bore a serenity beyond all earthly calm, and it was beautiful past wor- ship. At the first glimpse of her Barxelhold rose with a cry and ran towards Feltor, but he also arose and waved her back with a com- manding horror which arrested her. And the two, ghastly pale and trembling, looked upon the new comer, and the face they saw was no more the face of Vreda. The woman turned and moved a hand and spoke. Her voice was sweet and low, but it reached every ear in the crowd. * I forbid this sacrifice.* She turned again upon Wenegog, and he ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS III recoiled from the altar. The guards released Heurtan, and he, arising in terror and bewil- derment from the stone, beheld her face and faUing upon his knees kissed her raiment. * Forbid ? * gasped Wenegog. His eyes started and his clawlike nails clucched at his bare scalp between the oak-leaves of his crown. * Who forbids ? * * I,* she answered ; ' God's messenger.* The Druid cowered and shook. Her glance dwelt upon him with a calm of pity and knowledge dreadful to endure. He cast both hands high and wide into the air and cried aloud : * Depart I To-day Bel goes hungry I ' II! IH ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS CHAPTER Vm. A WARM wind full fed with woodland odours rustled the grasses of wide pasture lands, and made a lazy stir in the high piled clouds which rose in irregular layers of dove-colour and glistering white above the distant sea. The tender music of the wind mingled with the notes of innumerable birds and with the careless babble of a brook hurrying to the river, and pausing here and there to swirl and murmur in brown pools, beloved of idle trout. The jester, with his bare feet paddUng in the brook, and his shoulders propped against a wijlow tree, stared straight before him in a day dream, and by his side gambolled the child Wankard, rolling over a heap of fresh-gathered wild flowers, or tossing the blossoms in the air, and allowing them to fall about his face until they veiled him from the sunlight. High ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS 113 in the Bummer blue a lark trilled clear and shrill. * Heurtan/ said the child suddenly, * I am hungry.* The jester awoke from his fancies, and stretching out his hand for a wallet which lay beside him, opened it and spread its contents on the grass — a deer's dried tongue, a handful of ro^tn, and a hunch of black bread. * Poor fare for a prince,* said Heurtan, * but the best that can be found.* The child's healthy appetite made a ban- quet of the simple meal, and the jester looked bn with an air of affectionate approval. * Am I a prince, Heurtan ? * Wankard asked, looking up at his protector. * Ay art thou !* Heurtan answered. 'Art the only child of the queen of the Coerleans — the greatest nation in the land, and the mas- ters of everybody ere the Eomans came. But there is no wolf so valiant but he shall find another to make wolves' meat of him.' * My mother was the queen,' said the child half inquiring. rr ! ^ ■ ,i il ■:m ir; 111 ' ' m "4 OA^^ TRAVELLER RETURNS * Ay, and might have been queen in Eeaii- hola. She sits there now, lad, with all the great kings and queens and warriors of time past. Thou'lt go thither one of these days and see her.* * Wilt be there too, Heurtan ? * asked the child. * Nay,' said Heurtan. * Eeanhola hath no place for the like of me. "lis for the kings and governors, and for the strong in fight and wise in council. Happily there is a place for the poor and sorrowful, though the word of it came but lately.' A coarse and jovial voice souaded some two or three hundred yards up-stream f The bear's claw long and keen, The otter's tooth keen and white, The wolfs tooth yellow and strong And the king's hound hath no fear. Then, at the end of the verse came a wild and sustained ' Ohoo I ohoo I ' with a chorus of barking dogs. * Old Serl ! ' cried the child, springing mer- rily to his feet. The jester caught him by the hand, and N ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS ns hogging him to the shelter of a bush, laid him down behind it, and looked about him as if for a way of escape. *The worm that runs from the crow might save himself trouble if he had hut the headpiece to think of it/ he said, resigning himself. *He is fleeter of foot than I am, and he hath his dogs with him. And why should Serl do me a mischief?' He stood up, motioning to the child, who followed his example ; and tlien holding Wan- kard's hand in his own, advanced to meet the singer, who, rounding a clump of willows at a little distance, stopped short in a second wild halloa at beholding him. He was old and lean, and half naked, and was burned and tanned everywhere to a reddish-brown. His bald head was uncovered, and shone like polished copper in the sunlight. ' What ? Thee ? ' shouted the new comer. *I never dreamed to see thee again, unless it had been that some chance wind had blown a cinder of thee into mine eyes. How didst like being taken for Bel's meat ? Wast nigh I a I' T • m il6 ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS to being roasted when I saw thee last, and Bel taketh his roast overdone.* Heurtan advanced reassured. * Hast lost thine ass's ears P * askied Serl, grinning all over his weather-beaten counte- nance. * 'Tis a pity. Thou wast never so fit to wear them. A freeborn Coerlean to go a- running after new-fangled gods, and to get roasted for his pains ! Why, lad, if Odan, and There, and Sanfer be not good enough for thee, there are new gods by the score at Deva, set out in stone, and gold, and silver — gods of value, lad. Art in favour again ? ' he asked suddenly, pulling Heurtan aside and looking askance at Wankard. ' Nay,' said the jester. ' The child loves me, and will be near me when he can.* ' He hath little the look of a king's son,' Serl muttered in his beard. 'He would go otherwise if the queen were alive ! ' * Ay ! ' Heurtan assented sadly. * There be some mad folk who say she is back again,' said Serl. ' I was of that mind myself for a flash when she came between Wenegog's knife and thee. But I have set ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS 117 eyes on her since, and she is no more like to the queen than I am. But I'll tell thee who she is, lad, to my mind/ His voice sank, and he looked about him with a furtive air. * Tis Ashtali come back again/ * Ash tali ? ' said the jester. 'And none other,' Serl answered. 'She hath a face, lad — there is no way of saying it. 'Tis as mild as moonlight, and ye go cold with the sight of it. And for grace and fairness — why, I was like to break out a- weeping like a girl when ye smite her for some slut's trick or another. And go where she will she taketh light with her like the sun, and the folks* hearts are warm with her. There is naught else talked of Some say it is the queen again, and some that she came across the seas from Gaul or where not ; but your southerns are always swart and black like these Eomans, and she hath a skin like milk. But most are of my mind, and say it is Ashtali, the Bringer of Peace, herself* ' 'Twould be the plainest way to ask her,' said Heurtan. * Would it ? ' Serl demanded with a gri- <1 Il8 ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS Nl mace. * Hadst better try it ! Thou hadst the ^ chance but a day or two agone. I tell thee she strikes a fear into a man. Why, but yes- terday, Meoln and Theg had their knives out one at another. Theg had kicked Meoln's hound, and they have been running after the same wench for a year past, and so were ripe for quarrel. And she did but walk between them, and sayeth she : " What I can twin brethren thirst each for the other's blood ? " And they dropped their knives and stood amazed at each other.' * How knew she that they were twin breth- ren ? ' Heurtan asked. * It stands to reason she should know,' Serl answered. *■ She knows what goeth on inside of a man, and if he thinks a thing she will answer to him.' ' I know what I saw,' said Huertan. * There lay I, held hand and foot, with that bloody knife held over me, and just when it should have ripped into me it dropped beside me, and I was on my feet again. And the first thing I saw and the only thing I saw was the face of Queen Vreda, and that I know as well ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS 119 as I know thine, and better. Yet, when I found daring to look again, it was not the face of the queen or like it.* * Naught like it,' Serl affirmed. *It is Ashtali ; who else should stop the sacrifice to Bel? She and Bel were ever at war. Tis said Wenegog looks black as the nethergloom when they pass, and that's no wonder, for Bel goeth hungry and Wenegog will have to find him reason for it.' ^ Will she stay, thinkest thou ? ' demanded Heurtan anxiously. 'May well wish she should,* said Serl. * Folk are weary of these slayings and burn- ings, and since Barxelhold hath been queen there hath been naught else. No man hath quarrel with a feast to Bel when his time comes, and the lesser things that are appointed serve to keep folk merry when they roast none but Mernogaels. But when it comes to the torture of goo^ Coerieans half a score times in a moon, it passeth patience, and no man can say when his turn may come. Looking on is well enough, but I have no mind for a sUt nose nor a tongue cut out.' H' I ! ItO ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS The old man looked round furtively, in sudden fear lest these treasonable murmurs should have been overheard by the child, but \Vankard was chasing a butterfly a score of yards away, and he heaved a sigh of relief. ' It is not safe to speak of these things,* said Heurtan, understanding him. ' The child loves both thee and me, but a word of his might lose our lives.* Serl nodded, and whistling to his dogs, who had strayed up and down the bank of the stream, brought them all to heel and strode away without further speech. Wankard ran back to the dwarf, and circling one of his legs with both arms leaned his head against his companion lovingly. Heurtan smoothed the lad's tangled curls and stooped to kiss him. ^he sun had declined, and the silent sha- dows had flowed over the landscape, though the sky was still suffused with a softly brilliant Mght. A nightingale in a copie beyond the stream sounded the first notes of his nightly song timidly, as if not yet assured that his .ixne was come. * Who is Ashtali ? ' asked the child, sud- 1 ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS III denly, looking upward with grave brown eyes. • What knowest thou of Ashtali ? * asked Heurtan, smiling on him. ' Serl said Ashtali had come back again/ the child answered. ' Who is she ? ' • Sit down/ said Heurtan ; * I will tell thee aU I can. Look up yonder. She dwelleth there and they call her the goddess of the Blue of the Skies, and the Bringer of Peace to Men. She is granddaughter to Odan and There, but she wed a young warrior and they had one pretty lad like thee. And Senak, who is god of the Boiling Springs, hated the warrior because he would fain have wed Ashtali himself; but he was foul to look at and of an evil heart. And Senak made him- self into an adder, and stung the child that he died. Sit quiet. Hearest thou the bird yonder? The first tfiat ever was that sang that song, flew out of the child's grave, and all that fol- lowed learned it of him. And Ashtali hath sought the child up and down, for it is known that he still lives among the birds, but they all speak the same speech yd sing the same 1^ '/. ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS I \ song, and she hath never found him. So Ashtali goeth sad of heart herself, but the man is blest that meets her, for she carrieth peace allwheres, and trouble cannot live in the same land with her. . . . Why, what a fool am I to fill the child's head with these fables of the old faith when I should be teaching him the true things I have learned I ' There was silence for a time, the child dreaming over the story, and Heurtan filled with his own fancies. The shadows deepened everywhere, and the voice of the soul of Ash- tali's lost child wailed and throbbed from the distant copse. A voice spoke in a tone of ineffable softness : ' Wankard ! ' The jester roUing round upon his hands and knees saw before him a dim figure clad in white. The figure knelt with outstretched arms, and the child, bounding towards that proffered embrace, fell into it with tears and sobs. * Mother ! ' he cried in an ecstasy of joy. * Mother I mother ! * Heurtan staring through the dusk seemed ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS "3 to see the eyes of Vreda full upon him, and dropped upon his face. He lay there but for a moment, and then Wankard cried out as if in fear. • No. Art not my mother I ' ' At this voice of childish despair, Heurtan looked up again and saw, not Vreda, but a woman of great stateliness and beauty, who smiled upon him with a soft radiance and gentleness, the like of which he had never seen before. The glance rested upon him for a mere instant, but it banished all fear and discomfort from his heart. * Thou wilt love me, Wankard, wilt thou not ? ' she said. The child for sole answer threw his arms about her neck and kissed her. When she spoke there was something in her voice which thrilled Heurtan with a baffling sense of the nearness of an escaped memory. She lield the child close to her bosom, and kissed him often with great ten- derness, and Wankard, with both arms about hei nei/K, kisse' child were striving after arrears of love. There were tears in his own eyes as he looked on. He had lost his first fear, but there was still a sense of awe about him which forbade him to ask the questions which filled iiis mind. Who was she — this strange new comer who moulded the hearts of men like wax? Ashtali ? David derided all Druidic lore, and had no more regard for the lovely legends of the bards than for the hideous imaginings of the priests. Yet might it not be that the creed of David and the sweet fancies of the singers were alike true ? Whilst these thoughts filled his mind Vreda spoke to him. 'Trouble not thyself as yet for these things, Heurtan. The child must crawl ere it can walk, yet it will walk in good time.' As Wankard clung about Vreda's neck, his right arm and wrist pressed close to her, but the hand hung lax and powerless. She drew it away and fondled it. There was a ridge upon the wrist where the cords of the hand had been severed. ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS i35 * That was the handiwork of Hanun/ said Vreda. ' Heurtau says I shall be king one day for all that,' said Wankard. *I shall learn to fight left-handed, and then they will take me for king, even though I cannot carry a sword in my right hand. And when I am king I shall make Eoedweg, or Elangor, or somebody kill Hanun for me.' ' Hanun,' said Vreda, * did but obfty the orders of Wenegog. The servant obeys the will of his master.' * Ah ! ' thought Heurtan to himself. * And if the child comes to be king he shall repay the pair of them.' * Teach the child no ill lesson, Heurtan,' said Vreda. * Love thine enemy, and do good to them that despitefuUy use thee.' The jester's thought had burned like a hot coal within him, but the gentle voice fell upon his heart like a cooling dew. He had heard the saying from David, and had thought it hard. Now it came with a tender certainty as if it were the one thing fair and good. *Tbou art bound for the gathering to- i! fif i;1' ' if 116 ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS night, Heurtan,' said Vrcda. ' Shall we go together ? ' She arose, still holding the child's hand, and led the way. Heurtan followed at a little distance. The child prattled in his pretty treble, and Vreda stooped fondly over him, listening. He had altogether grown out of his fear of her, and chattered gaily in pure confidence of love and understanding Walk- ing thus they came in a little while upon the skirts of a wood, and Vreda, with an assured step, led into a path where the close cluster- ing trees and overhanging boughs made the air as dark as at a summer midnight. Heur- tan following could still faintly discern the white glimmer of her dress, and the child's happy voice babbled along as merrily as if he had been walking through sunshine. After a little while they came upon a clearing in which stood two huts oi mud and wattle. The stream, lost for awhile, appeared here once more, ripphng in a series of tiny cas- cades, and making a sleepy music as it ran. Half-a-dozen people were clustered together near one of the huts, two of them kneeling. an< t]j( re^ t0( % } ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS 137 he X a in cas- ran. jther jUns, and as Vreda emerged upon the clearing, and drew near the group, a voice arose : « It is Ashtali ! ' One ran forward and fell at Vreda's fee» with inarticulate' crierf, clutching at her robe and weeping wildly. * The child is there,' said Vreda. * Bring me a brand that I may see her.' Another ran to a slumbering fire between the huts, and drawing a brand from it, waved it up and down until it broke into flame. Tl\en returning she held the torch near the recumbent figure of a girl of fifteen, whose thin pallor bespoke severe and recent illness. The light showed the kneehng figure at Vreda's feet, a grey old woman with stream- ing hair, who looked up with clasped hand and weeping eyes, brokenly calling down all the benedictions of the gods. The girl reached up a feeble hand and smiled. Vreda took the extended hand. * Yesterday she was dying,' cried the old woman. 'Lanor himself could do naught for her. To-day she could stand ami walk. And thou hast done it, thou only.' 11l , 128 ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS -i\ * I knew the herb/ said Vreda, * and it groweth within a score of paces.' She stooped to lay a hand upon the girl's forehead, and then taking Wankard's hand, beckoned to Heurtan and moved away. The few who were about her withdrew themselves to clear her path and stood aside in a reverential awe. Wankard went silently for a time, but when they had passed the clearing and had once more plunged into the wood he broke out with a sudden question : * Art thou Ashtali ? They call thee Ashtali ! ' Heurtan drew in his breath and trod warily that he might catch her answer. * Nay, dear one. There is no Ashtali. 'Tis but a preLty fable.' 'But Heurtan told me of her,' said the child. He spake to please thee,' Vreda answered. ' There is no Ashtali.' ' Then.' said Wankard, not to be beaten back from inquiry, and feeling not the dread with which she inspired others, * if thou art not ^ shtali, who art thou ? Tell me thy name.' m ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS 139 Heurtan trod yet more warily to listen, and Vreda was silent in perplexity. Of their own will people had called her Ashtali, and none until now had asked her name. But as she walked in silence and in darkness, she was aware of a sudden warmth and sweetness in her own mind, and a voice seemed to speak to her : * Why not mine ? For thou and I are as one ! ' And she knew this inward voice with great certainty, and before the child could speak again she answered him : ' Thou mayst call me Kalyris.' The moon had risen, and its light was filtered softly through the leaves. The path was hidden by a faint mist, and wreaths of vapour curled and rolled in every vista of the wood. The mist took all tones of pearl and opal, and the trees and foliage were saturated with a bluish haze. All the birds were silent except that one nightingale who s/ill sang in the now distant copse, the clear ^^ild wail of his passion and longing searching the calm night in vain. '*«• :'! i K 130 (9;V£" TRAVELLER RETURNS As Vreda and the child walked on hand in hand, Heurtan following, the sound of a low chant touched their ears and died. A little ' later, one deep and solemn voice trembled half audibly upon the silence. As they drew nearer the voice took plainer meaning. It was the voice of David raised in solemn and pathetic exhortation. The remnant of his disciples knelt or sat before him in an open hollow of the wood in the sheen of the mist and moonlight. Vreda arrested Heurtan's steps by a gesture, and Wankard stood in silence at her side. ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS 131 CHAPTEE IX. In the eirly evening of that same . day the regal table was spread in the great ante- chamber. Osweng, Eoman gallant from head to foot, fidgeted hither and thither alone, often and anxiously regarding the hangings of the queen's chamber. A brown hand thrust the curtains aside, and one of Barxelhold's women emerged from the inner room. She glanced at Osweng with a momentary sly smile, and then crushing her lips into a sud- den primness, bent her head and stood apart as Barxelhold stepped radiantly into the hall. Osweng bowed low — the maid's features es- caped from control now that the queen had passed her — and Barxelhold, with her lithe and luxuriant figure drawn to its height, stood dazzling in a robe of transparent silk gauze, clotted with beads of gold. She was aUght X a '* '■ 132 ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS with pure 'eminine complacency, for no woman of Ooerlea had ever before her been so gorgeously raimeuted. The fabric was beyond her dreams, and even a great lady of Rome might have envied its possessor. The cunningest of Syrian workmen had spent half a lifetime upon it, and Osweng had treacher- ously sold a hundred freemen of his nation to pay the price demanded of him. Barxelhold posed like a statue of conscious triumph, and lie transparent robe with its thick-clustering embroideries draped her form in a foam of white and pearly grey and gold, which every here and there dispersed and re- vealed the rosy graces it made pretence to hide. The tiring-woman disappeared, and as the curtain rustled behind her Osweng lifted his glance to the queen's face. His eye flashed and his face reddened. • * Hast deigned to wear it ! * he cried in a suppressed but eager voice, and stepped for- ward with outstretched hands. * Feltor I ' said the queen, with eyebrows raised in tranquil idleness. ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS 133 Osweng, checked in the attitude of advance, turned his eyes and saw the king jealously scowling from him to BarxeUiold, and back again, with a hand upon the haft of his knife. The courtier's posture slid subtly into one of obeisance to Feltor, but the king, with no re- sponse to the salute, cast himself sullenly into his seat at the head of the table, and eyed his rival with a wrathful disdain. Barxelhold seated herself beside him, and toying indifferently with his hair with one hand, waved Osweng to a seat with the other. Feltor half rose, but sank back again, as Wenegog entered the chamber from the outer hall. The Druid's face was heavy with stormy thought, the rims of his eyes were red with the watching of three sleepless nights, and his wrinkled temples clung close to the bone. He was worn beyond beUef, but his com- manding figure moved with its accustomed majesty. The four sat down to their meal, and made but a poor pretence of eating. The servants who waited upon them were infected by the prevaihng gloom, and did their office trem- ;■ 11 134 ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS i blingly. Suddenly Feltor flung down his knife, and the weapon clattering from the metal trencher before him went spinning half- way down the table. He turned on Wenegog with a look of menace and hate. 'Where is Wankard?' he asked. ' How should I know ? ' demanded Wene- gog in ansvir. ; cing the king's wild gaze. ' By Odan's beard/ cried Feltor, smiting the table with i-Is cienched hand, and thrust- ing his face near to the Druid's, * if aught of harm befall him, I will have thee limbed.' Wenegog lifted his shaggy eyebrows with an insolent scorn, and holding a small piece of meat between the finger and thumb of the left hand, felt for it with his knife, severed it, raised it to his lips, and then tranquilly push- ing away his trencher, folded his arms upon the table, and chewing at the morsel with his white beard wagging up and down, looked into the king's eyes with an enraging quietude. ' Wilt speak ? ' stormed Feltor, ' or shall I force thee to speech ? ' * Force ? * said Wenegog. ' Art moon- is ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS t3$ Struck?' He drew back his trencher and went on eating, still staring fixedly .at the king. * Mayhap Sanfer hath cast spells upon thee? Hanun hath potions.' ' I know thy potions,' Feltor answered, with a sidelong look at the chamber which had been Vreda's. 'And 'twas Hanun maimed the child. I tell thee — priest as thou art — if further harm befall the child at thy hands, I will give thine eyes to the crows and thy heart to the dogs.' The Druid rose slowly until he towered above the king. His eyes shot sheer light- nings, and his lean fingers twitched and trembled as he held out a denouncing hand. ' And to this hath it come ! ' he stammered in the extremity of his wrath. ' The gods go shamefaced, and their servant is threatened in the house wherein he should be most re- garded. Have a care, Feltor, lest I lay a curse upon thee. They who made thee can unmake thee ! ' ' Made me ? ' cried Feltor, rising madly to confront him. * 'Twas this that made me.' He laid his hand upon the hilt of a great I ; 136 ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS sword which stood beside his chair. * And by all the kings in Eeanhola it shall hold me where I stand in spite ' He stopped abruptly in the full passion of his speech. His eyes, rolling here and there, had fallen upon Barxelhold, who in complete unconcern of the quarrel had slipped her hand underneath the table to meet Osweng's. The two, sitting thus hand in hand and smiling on each other, glanced upwards with a guilty start at the sudden cessation of Feltor's voice. The king looked fi ^m one to the other with a dark and dreadful face, and they waited in expectation of some tempestuous outbreak. Feltor said nothing, but Osweng who had half arisen dropped back into his seat, and Barxelhold's bold eyes drooped be- fore her husband's gaze. The silence had grown awful to them both when Feltor strode from the table. He turned at the hanging curtain and bent a final glance upon his wife. She had not courage to meet it, for his silent wrath cowed her more than any storm of indignation could have done, and Feltor, dropping the curtain, disappeared. m. ONE TIMVELLER RETURNS w He passed through the great hall with disordered gestures and savage mutterings. Roedweg, who had been in waiting, had heard his voice raised in anger but a little while before, and not knowing what this abrupt departure from the table might portend, watched him to the exit from the hall, and then followed in his steps. Feltor raised his right hand again and again, stabbing down with it. But to slay either Barxelhold or Osweng too swiftly were to lose the best of vengeance. No mere mor- sel of revenge, however sweet, could satisfy the infinite hunger which consumed him. To see them Hnger in torment for years on years, to slake the heat of his heart on tears com- pelled by tortures as yet unimagined — to slay them momently with hideous cunnings of atrocity, and to have them yet to slay — his soul ached for these things. He passed the plain and dashed into the gloom of the forest. The desert loneliness, the dusk and silence, wrought a slow and halting change in him. His rage flashed often still, but his mood fell downward towards a nv I3» ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS deep dejection. Barxelliold was weary of him, and he had no power to keep her. The remembrance of Vreda struck him Uke an arrow from some unsuspected ambush of the soul. Vreda — a goddess among women I In the pang of this swift recall Barxelhold with her heartless graces showed Hke a mere drab beside the serene soft splendour of the beauties of the murdered queen. He could remember no woman who compared with Vreda in beauty, and could imagine none who might have ranked with her in goodness. And he had consented to her murder for the sake of this faithless and treacherous thing oi pink and white, who had not truth enough to wish to hide her falseness. He walked on, following the forest paths mechanically, and the gloom of his heart deepened at every footstep. He had wan- dered for hours when he paused and awoke from his bitter fancies at the hearing of a sound strange to the forest solitudes, and strange to his own ears. It was sustained and distant. It fell at times to a deep and solemn repose of sound, and rose at times to ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS m heights of triuipi^h. The king shook with a superstitious terror ; but in a while the music mastered him, and he began to feel that there was nothing harmful in it. He moved to- wards the sound with a half-unwilling foot- step, and by-and-by in his own pauses could distinguish the words of the song. They were strange beyond strangeness to his ^ars and heart. But when the chant had died away, and he moved, eager and curious by now, towards the meeting-place of the forest wor- shippers, words still more amazing reached him. One voice arose tremulous with ear- nestness. ' Have mercy upon our enemies, God ! ' A clamour of desire shook on the air. ' Be it so, Lord ! ' Another voice took up the petition. * Have mercy upon Wenegog, and remem- ber not his cruelties against him.' Again the clamour of desire arose. * Be it so, Lord ! ' Then arose a voice that thrilled him to the soul, a voice more soft than the cooing of the wood-pigeon, tenderer than a mother's who IT ! ! 140 ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS iiHti illcfi lavishes her love upon her first-born, and fuller of pleading than if it begged for life. * Have mercy on the king and lead him to the light, and blot out his iniquities.' It was the very voice of Vreda, and it was no more astounding that the dead voice should sound in his ears again than that any amongst this wretched band shouH call down blessings upon those who had doomed them to sword and fire, and slain their dearest by strange tortures. Feltor stood as it were entranced, and for a time heard no more. There was no longer any terror upon him, but a wild unearthly something unknown till now began to flutter at his heart. Pang followed pang — he knew not what it might be — his heart felt near to bursting, and as this new stupendous thing — this sublimity of human pity and forgiveness, God-inspired, smote truly home, he fell in a mad transport of tears. Pride and shame fought alike, but alike were borne away. When at length this inward storm had spent itself, he struggled to his knees, and saw, unc^tain and distorted through his tears, ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS 141 a woman robed in white, who held a child by the hand and looked down upon him. He dashed both hands across his eyes and sprang to his feet. The moonlight, broad and full, was on Vreda's face, but he saw there no likeness of her self that had been. The face was of a lofty beauty, and wore a tranquil sadness. The starlike eyes looked on Feltor with pure pity. He stood before her with the child's sense of awe, and the veil of secrecy which hides the thoughts of men from men seemed drawn away from him. * These things are strange to thee, Feltor,* said Vreda, * and but a little while ago were strange to all men.' The king stood silent and dared no more to look at her. Her soul yearned over him and his guilt and darkness. * This is thy child and Vreda's,' she said. He looked up at her with eyes of sudden terror. ' Fear not what I may know. Fear thine own soul and fly from thine own guilt.' Her voice was sweet with pity. Feltor 14a ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS had not spoken, but he had framed the words within his mind : ' It was not I ' She raised a hand against him. ' Lie not in thine own heart, Feltor. Thou mayst speak to me of these things hereafter. But this is thy child, flesh of thy flesh, and bone of thy bone. And Hanun hath maimed him, and he hath lain with the beasts of the field.' * These things,' staanmered Feltor, * wei-e not of my doing.' As he spoke he rebelled against himself ' Why should I answer to thee ? ' * Answer thyself, Feltor. 'Twas Vreda made thee king, and clothed thee in love, and heaped kindness upon thee — and the child is hers and thine.' * What knowest thou of Vreda. ?' ' Let it sufiice thee that I know,' she an- swered patiently. 'I am not here to chide. Have pity on thyself, Feltor, and have pity on the child." Conscience, dwarfed and stunted in that savage soul, took miraculous growth beneath ONE TRAVFJ.LER RETURNS 143 these words and sprang to giant size. The commonplace of cruelty grew hideous to him. He fell upon his knees, and holding out his arms to the child, looked on him with eyes filled with a new hunger. ' The lad stood in the moonlight shrinking back from him and holding Vreda's robe, but there was a child- ish courage in his face. A gleam of his dead mother, a touch of Feltor's self, mingled in his look. 'Dost fear me, Wankard?' asked the king. At that instant he felt that he had given his own flesh to the torture, and the first touch of fatherly feeling he had known since Vreda's death made his eyes dim. ' Have no fear,' he cried ; ' none shall hurt thee more. Thy father is king, lad, when all is said, and hi. ; that shall but breathe unkindly on thee will I slit at the throat. Come hither, Wan- kard. I have forgotten thee too long.' Wankard moved timidly, but Vreda per- suaded him tbrwarcl with a gentle hand. 1^'eluor strained him to his breast, and kissed him again and again * Hast thy mother's eyes,' he said tenderly ; I « :( M4 ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS WWI V • and then rising with a sudden fury, he went raving up and down in the moonlight and the shadow. ' His mother ! Fool, to barter gold for lead, to sell truth for a liar, and a wife for a wanton ! That jay of Caerlheon shall roast for it.' ^ Then he ran back to Wankard and over- whelmed him with half-savage caresses until the boy cried out for fear. ' Did I harm thee ? Nay, pretty blossom ! Who should hurt anything like thee ? How found I the heart ? ' And the savage heart thus wakened could hardly have enough of its love-feast. ' Shalt be brave to-morrow, dear one. Shalt go as a king's son should, with a leopard-skin for thy shoulders, and a sword — wouldst like a sword .^ Ay ? And if any doeth thee spite wilt out with iron upon him, I warrant me. Art pup of the game, mine own lad I ' Then again he set him down swiftly, and again went raging up and down. *Hanun hath potions? I will have him by the throat Hkewise. How should I forget ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS 145 mine own flesh and blood, but i3erau8e of their drugs and enchantments ? I will burn out the brood ' * Give not thine heart to vengeance. He paused in a wrathful amaze. *And to what then should I give mine heart ? ' He laughed at the very madness of the rebuke even in the height of his anger. *Give me the child,' he said. * He shall be with thee at sunrise,' Vreda answered. ' And why not now ? ' he asked, with a new suUenness of face and voice. * I go to seek Heurtan,' she answered, * and he and the child shall come to thee together.' 'Ay!' said Feltor. * They chased Heur- tan also, because he had too shrewd a wit for Wenegog. Didst love Heurtan, lad, didst not .? ' * Yea, I love Heurtan,' said the boy. ' Shalt have him with thee again,' cried the king, snatching him up once more in his arms. *And he and thee shall go bravely together.' inv 146 ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS 'I will bring them both at sunrise,' said Vreda. Feltor set Wankard upon his feet ; the child ran to her, and she took him by the hand. ' Thy light is dawning, Feltor. Thou mayst yet be worthy to sit amongst the lowly.' She moved away, leading the child, and Feltor stood in amazement, staring after her. The words were the words of madness, but yet they left some dim echo of great mean- ing. He listened to it as he had listened when a child to the mysterious voices of the forest wind, conscious of deeps and spaces in his mind which he had not known before. Vreda and Wankard vanished in the intri- cacies of the woodland path. Feltor turned away, and having cast about for a moment — for he had wandered here with no marking of his own footsteps — hit upon his homeward road, and followed it. An hour's swift walk- ing brought him to the edge of the forest. His heart had been filled with strange thoughts, and he had by turns raged and melted as he remembered Barxelhold and Wankard. But now as he pushed the last branch aside the ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS 147 lust of blood shot through him like a fire, for a bare three hundred yards away Osweng ran across the clearing in full moonlight. The king, skirting the wood, and holding to its shadow, sped in the same direction. Osweng ran towards a group of stone huts which stood on the margin of the forest. Feitor racing sjlently on the greensward, and watching Osweng with sidelong eyes of hatred, saw him enter the central hut. *Hanun?' he asked himself. 'What should he be doing with Hanun at this hour ? ' He saw a light gleam through the door way as Osweng pushed the hanging of skins aside, and running softly after him paused, crouching beneath the wall. He heard a sound of breathing at his shoulder, and turned with his hand at his knife. * What dost here, Roedweg ? * * I saw and followed.* * Listen.' The two crouched near the hanging of skins together, and each set his soul in his ears. « m I) ; 148 ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS WM CHAPTER X. Hanun was Wenegog's right arm, his execu- tioner, his adviser, his slave, and now and then his master. The man was born out of his time. A thousand years later he might have been burned as a magician. Five hundred years later still he might have achieved great- ness as a mocking philosopher. Born where he was, he used the supple dexterities of his mind and the practised nimbleness of his hands for the invention and working of miracles for the support of a faith he laughed at, and would with whole heart have despised but for the fact that its skilful pro- fession brought wealth and power. For his time he was a man of learning, and he loved to converse with strange people. He had met mariners from the far East, and soldiers and priests from Bome, and having made such ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS 149 study of the religions of the earth as was possible for him, had arrived at the conviction that Odan and There, Wodon and Freja, Jeho- vah and Jesus, Jupiter and Minerva, were alike non-existent. As a means of providing a comfortable living for a priesthood, any one of them seemed to him as good as any other ^ and though he went through his^wn public business with a grave face, he made up for his self-restraint by an increase of inward laughter. In person he was spare and tall, and there was a certain malignant devil of suavity in his • face — the complacency of a fed tiger. He sat, at the moment of Osweng's arrival, in act of preparing a miracle for the next feast-day. About his arm, beneath his wide bell-shaped sleeve, was curled a fangless adder, and in his right hand he poised a frog. The trouble of the trick lay in teaching the frog at a signal to leap into the open bosom of his robe, and in inducing the adder, at a simultaneous sign, to crawl from the sleeve. Osweng slid into the chamber at the moment when the trick was for the first time successfully performed. I mw I < , f 150 ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS !i \i ;: The frog leapt into the robe — the snake writhed out of it. Hanun rose smiling. To Osweng's eye the thing looTced like a trans- mutation. 'Have no fear, my child,' said the Druid, rising with a courtly grace. ' For them that have studied nature she hath no wonders. 'Twere as easy to make a toad of thee as a snake of the frog thou sawest but now.' The Lennian's face took a comfortless aspect at this statement, and Hanun, turning to drop tlie snake into a wicker basket, sent the frog dexterously after him, and impri- soned both with an oaken lid. • ' She hath consented,' said Osweng. ' Good,' returned Hanun. Youth will still be served. The hunt passe oh by here to- morrow ? ' Osweng nodded. ' She can feign well, and must feign her best to-morrow. Have her qualmish ere she starts, until the king himself shall beseech her to rest at home. This will she in no wise do, being bright and brave, and keen after the chase. Then again must she be touched with qualm at the starting, and again be too keen on the ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS 1 51 chase to return. But here, without, she must be seized with great pains and cry out upon Hanun and his herbs of soothing, and awhile she shall be here for quiet in my care, until a score of thy lads of Lennia fall upon me and ])ind me and gag me, and thou rid est away with thy prize to the border. And when tliat cometh to pass, if thou hast a value for thy prize or thy weasand, ride fast.' ' Trust me for that,' said Osweng. ' The fool saw us to-night, sitting handed together at table, and went out with never a word. He hath no courage to face a Lennian/ Osweng's braggart smile went sick and ghastly at that second, for the king with a gleam in his hand dashed through the door- way. Hanun moved forward by instinct, and the uplifted blade struck deep into his breast. The Lennian ran crouching with an inarticu late cry of terror, and ere Feltor could with- draw the blade had slipped into the night. He set his supple limbs to run, but a huge buffet felled him at the first stride, and before his scattered senses had again gathered them- selves together Roedweg had thonged him mw il f ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS wrist and ankle, and stood carelessly astride of him. Feltor emerged from the hut, and Roed- weg, turning his head upon his big shoulders, pointed at the prostrate Osweng with a laugh. The king struck at the prostrate figure witli his foot. ' Up, hound, and march I ' Hoedweg drew his knife and slashed the thong which bound Osweng's ankles. ' I am thy guest, Feltor,' said the chieftain. * I demand safe conduct to my own borders.' ' Shalt go parcel-wise,' said Roedweg ; ' a joint at a time.' * The fool saw ye last night ? ' said Feltor. He put his sandalled foot upon Osweng's throat, and moved it lightly there with a jocund ferocity. *And he saw ye handed .^^ And he had no courage to face a Lennian ? ' With that he trod so fiercely that the cap- tive's life was near being choked out of him ; but then, reflecting that he was parting with vengeance too lightly, he drew back. ' Bring him on,' he said, and lest he should yield to his own impulse walked away. if'-t ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS 153 *May it please thee to rise, sweet sir,' smiled Roedweg. *I am but one of the rougher sort, and scarce meet for such dainty company, but we must needs travel together for a time. And if I smote thee but now a soldier must needs follow orders, and I am Hke to smite thee again.' *The word of this will come tingling to thine ears in a while,* groaned Osweng as Roedweg plucked him to his feet. 'It may reach mine,' said Roedweg, who was in excellent good humour. * But thine ? I doubt me.' ' I am a vassal of Rome,* cried Osweng. ' Grandam's beard ! * replied Roedweg. *Here is a thing to brag on! Move quicklier, fair sir, lest I pinch thee 'twixt thumb and finger and mar thee for the king's uses.' Feltor paused ahead, and awaited them. * Bring him to the eating-hall,' he said briefly, ' and see that he escapes thee not.' ' He hath no envy to run,' replied Roed- weg. ' He hath a hare's talent that way, yet he goeth slow as a snail. ' Will thy daintiness I n l|i 154 ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS fififi m Ir:^ stir somewhat more sprightly ? I am be- holden to thee.* At a prick from Roedweg's long swortl Osweng leapt with a faint cry of fear and pain. Feltor strode on grimly in front, and, reaching the palace, walked at once into Barxelhold's chamber. A bronze lamp stood burning in a niche at the head of the couch, and she lay asleep with one hand beneath her cheek. She was half nude, and a light Italian shawl covered her barely from, the waist to the knees. Her breast heaved tranquilly, and she smiled in her dreams. Her yellow hair streamed unconfined, half veiling her neck and shoulder. One foot had fallen over the edge of the couch, and hung there in the pretty negligence of sleep. Feltor stood awhile regarding her, and then sank to a low seat near the couch, and bending forward with folded arms fell to wondering how so much beauty hid so trea- cherous a heart. He knew her fals< ' beyond doubt, and yet the beauty of he. ice and body held him. Barbarian as he was, the shame of this bondage was loathsome to him. ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS 155 and he recoiled from it and her with a linger- ing repugnance. It was a man's right to kill her as she lay there, and thinking thus he drew the knife, still wet with the blood of Hanun, from his girdle. The shameful sweet- ness held him too strongly, and the weapon went back to its place. He had not the right to kill her unheard. It was but a poor excuse, yet it served. The tumult , of his thoughts numbed his mind, and his emotions became obscure, like multitudinous sounds mixing and lost in one another. He thought of his dead consort, and the [)ride, reverence, and tenderness which his lust for Barxelhold had slain and buried. He thought of the scene in the forest, and the passion of tears i/mich had but now mastered him ; of his child and the new tenderness which had assailed himself ; of the mysterious visitant of whom men spoke as Ashtali, and the strange power she held ; of that mad tribe who prayed their god to bless their enemies. Then, dimly, the fancy touched him — ^if all men were of that mind revenge was at an end. He ha 1 slain Hanun for aught he knew or I w 156 ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS cared, and yet if all the world Were mad with mercy, Wenegog would have no ptrife against him. It might be well to be at peace with Wenegog. Touched thus, his mind, dulled as it was, caught a glimpse of reasonableness in the fantastic craze. The slow light of dawn broadened in the s])ace between the hangings and the roof, and the flame of the lamp grew pale and sickly. There was a little stir outside, and Eoedweg's voice growled at Osweng. At this Feltor's slumbering rage awoke again, and so stirred within him, that in pure dread of it he stole from the chamber, and laying the stained knife upon the table went back weaponless. Whether the growing light disturbed her or the sound of Feltor's stealthy^botsteps brought suspicion to her mind, Barxelhola stirred and murmured. The king stood stoue still and hstened. Her face lay upturned to the grey light and she smiled. ' Osweng,' she breathed softly. * Ay ? ' said Feltor drily. Ther^ was a sudden harshness in his throat. She awoke and stared at him with fright- lii ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS '57 Tht- ened eyes, as yei uncertain and full of sleep, as if he were some monster of her dreams. *A8kest for Osweng?* Feltor demanded with a threatening quiet. ' He is nigh at hand.* * Osweng ? ' she answered, looking at him with a feigned wonder. * Why should I ask for Osweng? Art worth many Oswengs to my thinking, Feltor.* Broad awake now, and with all her wits at work, she slipped from the couch with a face of smiling innocence, and catching the light shawl of Italian stuff about her shoulder, advanced towards him. He put out a hand against her, and she, reading the resolved and stony purpose in his face, clutched the hand in both hers and sought his eyes with a candid appeal so pure and true to look at that his rage took a sort of wonder into it. Her look changed to a frightened perplexity. ' Osweng ? ' she said again, as if she sought for something in her mind. ' Osweng ? What iB this of Osweng ? ' The shawl slipped from her ar'^ she stood lustrous in her own naked whiteness from w flijf! 158 ONJZ TRAVELLER RETURNS head to foot, her blue eyes clear as twin stars, her tender figure half crouching in false wonder and suppliance. * Thou vile innocence I ' cried Feltor. * This of Osweng ? Didst sit hand in hand with him before mine eyes last night ? ' * No, no ! ' she cried, as if in a wild wonder. * Feltor V * Didst plot to fly with him to-day ? * he asked, still holding her at arm's length. *Fly?' Her eyes wandered hither and thither in a seeming amazement, as if to ask what madness this might be. * Didst plan to fall sick nigh the house of Hanun?' ' Feltor I Feltor I He is crazed. The gods have mercy ! No, Feltor, no ! ' * Quit this fooling,' said Feltor, and sud- denly the flame of passion burned through the bonds which held him. * Koedweg I * he shouted, * bring that villain hither I ' He flung Barxelhold from him, and dragged the curtain of skins aside. She, with a cry, seized the fallen shawl and, darting to the couch, hid herself there. Eoedweg appeared / ONE TRAVEIfLER RETURNS 159 of :be jud- lie rged cry, the iared for an instant in the act of thrusting Osweng into the chamber, and then dropped back again. Feltor seized the stumbling captive in a swift and terrible grasp, arm and ankle, and swung him high. His vast strength was trebled by his rage. Osweng shrieked and writhed, and Barxelhold lifted her white face and half arose in terror. * Wilt have him ? ' roared Feltor. * Take himi* He dashed the figure at her feet. The body fell with a dull crash, and then lay motionless without a moan. For a mere second Feltor and Biirxelhold glared at each other, and then with a wild and anguished call upon his name the queen flung herself bodily upon Osweng, and, raising his head from the ground, strove to sj^iAunch the flow of blood with the priceless shawl which had covered her. * What is this of Osweng ? ' cried the king, with a wild irony. ' Hast dropped the hood ? ' He groped about his girdle for his knife, and looking up, as her hands vainly clasped Osweng's head, she saw the gesture and knew 1! Wifi i6o ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS its meaning. ' My knife,' he muttered ; * where is my knife ? ' He dashed from the chamber, and Barxel- hold felt that her last breath was near. In that supreme moment the scenes of her whole hfe flashed with an intense rapidity before her. Her first sight of Feltor when he came newly home from war against the Eoman invader — the glade where he first spoke to her of love — her father's chamber where the news of his near marriage with the queen came to her— the road in the oak-grove where Wenegog had broached his plot for Vreda's death — the couch nigh which she shrank — the same couch with Vreda's pale face and eyes of suffering shining from it, her own arm about the sufferer's neck, the devilish potion in her own hand. She saw the help- less head fall back — she seemed to hear the tinkling of the graven goblet as it fell. All this in a dozen heart-beats of uttermost fear. The curtain moved. She covered and closed her eyes in expectation of the end. A voice rose in the antechamber, and she knew it for the voice of Vreda. ONE TRAVELLER RETl/RNS i6i * Stay ! What wouldst thou do ? She is thy wife ? ' Then she heard the clash and clatter of a blade which fell upon the floor. !«• ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS CHAPTER XI. ii After this there was a silence which seemed long to Barxelhold. Then she heard words she could not distinguish, and sounds which had no meaning for her. There was a sick whirl and torrent in her blood, with strange pauses and reverses in it, and all objects upon which she looked grew dimly grey, and wore a palpitating outline of bright light. All things became indifferent, but none the less there was a great horror upon her, until with a shock this and everything sped out of exist- ence, and she lay in a swoon. She awoke chilled and troubled, not know- ing at first what had befallen her. Osweng's groaning breathing first recalled her to the place and time, and she turned to look at him, leaning on both hands, with her damp hair veiling her face and bosom. He lay ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS 163 where he had fallen, witn no change in so much as the posture of a finger. His face was white, and the red braids of his hair were in part blackened and caked with blood. There was no voice or movement in the ante- chamber, or even in the great hall without, and the silence threatened her. She could not tell how long she had lain in that darkness of the mind, but it was now broad day. The first conscious impulse which assailed her was to fly from Feltor's anger to the shelter her father could afibrd her, but as she arose to put this purpose into action she became aware of her own nudity, and shrank even from the presence of the swooning Osweng with the first touch of modesty she had ever known. Steahng hither and thither with frightened, noiseless feet, she found her scattered raiment and attired herself, fas- cinated meanwhile by Osweng's closed and swollen eyehds. t When she had dressed she dared to raise the curtains of her chamber, and peeped fear- fully into the hall without. Its loneliness M 2 ' Mr 164 0/^E TRA VELLER RETURNS lent her something of courage, and she stole through its silent space noiselessly, like a shadow. The vast hall beyond lay open to the sunlight wide and still. She slipped back to the antechamber and listened at the cur- tains of Feltor's apartment, hearing no sound. Was she utterly deserted?— left alone with her paramour who should have been? She longed to beat her hands and shriek aloud, but she had not courage to utter a sound, and her breath was secret and confined. The curtains had swayed aside at the centre behind the figure of the person who had last passed between them, and there was a gap through which a cautious eye might look unseen. She approached it on tiptoe as stealthily as a midnight thief, and gazing about the chamber, beheld Feltor, who lay asleep with half- bared chest and limbs. At the moment at which her glance discovered him he was silent, and his face was tranquil ; but a moment later his features were distorted, his breath came hard, and, raising his massive right arm in the air, he struck downwards with a gesture of intense rage. His clenched ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS 165 as fist smote the ground, and he awoke staring and grappling with an imagined enemy. Barx- elhold fled in a voiceless extremity of terror, for his eyes had seemed to light on hers, and with swift feet and outstretched hands she ran into the great waste hall to find herself confronted by her father, who, with his white robe swirling to and fro about his feet, strode wrathfully towards her. Her pent fear es- caped her in a cry, and she rushed to meet him, casting both arms about his neck in hysteric welcome. * What is this that comes to mine ears ? ' he asked, disdaining to soothe her. ' Feltor hath dared to raise a hand against thee?' She had no share in his wrath, but since she was not merely a savage, but more than half a woman, the question recalled Feltor to her mind, as he had clutched Osweng, and swung him high in his prodigious grasp, and the husband shone superb and glorious, terrible, lovable, worshipful — a thing of masterhood and awe — her lord and king — a man I — and in the space of that heartbeat she loved him. iM ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS * Nay,' she cried, with a burst of weeping ; *he raised no hand against me. He is no smiter of women.' * Twas thy tiring -woman brought me word of it,' said Wenegog. * She sayeth he sought his knife to slay thee, and would have slain thee, but for the strange woman.' With her new image of Feltor in her mind the mention of the strange woman roused Barxelhold to wrath. If Feltor chose to slay her, what right had any woman to such in- fluence over him as would baulk him of his will ? Osweng — Osweng was contemptible now. Ever so little piteous perhaps, but assuredly contemptible. Feltor was her king, and lit to be king of all, and knew how to have vengeance like a man, and how, like a man, to refrain from vengeance on that which was not worthy of his scorn. She would not have it that the strange woman had saved her life, and yet with feminine logic, which lives unchanged through the ages, she hated her for having saved it. She poured all this on Wenegog, incoherently, and mingled with tears and interjections. ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS itf7 * Go, pretty fool ! * said her father impa- tiently. * Hath Feltor threatened thee ? ' * Threatened me ? Nay, he hath not love enough to threaten me.' ' And thou canst find the face to moan for that ? ' asked Wenegog. ' Tell me, wast to ride away with Osweng to-day, wast not ? ' ' He hearkened to her,' moaned Barxel- hold. ' He would not have hearkened unto me.* * Seven holy toads of Aiea 1 ' cried Wene- gog, * I am past patience. Here cometh one idiot magpie chattering that Feltor would have slain another, and here is that other chattering and shrieking because she is not slain. And Feltor hath given that brat of Vreda's in charge of Roedweg, and hath called back Heurtan to be his dry nurse — a male fool's fit business.' His anger choked him, and he went strid- ing up and down. 'The child is Feltor's flesh and blood,* stormed Barxelhold ; ' he hath a right to care for him.* Wenegog stared at her in amazement, rrrrr 168 ONE TRAVELLER RET'JRNS il'li' II and stalked from the hall. She, dreading to be left alone, followed him into the open, and there came upon a surprising spec- tacle. A great semicircle of men, women, and children stood about the palace front, looking with one consent, and in a deep and respectful silence, towards a group beneath the wall. This group consisted of Vreda, David, Roedweg, Heurtan, and Wankard. They were all seated except the child, who ran from one to the other with a bright in- fantine glee, and there was nothing in the act or aspect of any one of them to account for the rapt silence of the crowd. * What is the meaning of this ? ' Barxel- hold demanded. * They are agaze to see the Blasphemer under thine own walls,' answered Wenegog, * and for once they have a reason for their wonder.* Between the half-ring of onlookers and the group on which all eyes were fixed, stood a band of a score or thereabouts, chieftains of the court and officers of the priesthood. To- wards this group moved Wenegog, and to ipi!l:i ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS 169 him the attention of the crowd was at once diverted. *Woerex/ said Wenegog, addressing one of the chiefs, * bind me yonder hoary rascal, and bear him to the Cave of Sacrifice.' *The king hath bidden Roedweg to see that no harm befall him,* answered the chief- tain. *This is no matter of the king's,' said Wenegog coldly. *He blasphemes the gods, and they are weary of forbearing. Have a care lest thou side with him.' The chief paled, but he made no movement in answer to the slow and imperious gesture with which the Arch-Druid commanded him towards David. At this open yet tacit rebel- lion, Wenegog raged inwardly, but by an effort he maintained an appearance of calm. He gazed from one face to another, and saw everywhere a lowering pretence of uninterested indifference, which he knew to be set up as a barrier between himself and them. Not an eye met his, and for the first time he saw his great office confronted by irreverence. * The king holds his shield between the w ^m 170 ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS gods and the thing that angers them?* he askod in a voice of menacing quiet. *And how long think you that the shield Avill stay- there ? Or the king ? ' He would hardly have spoken thus if he had not seen clearly at what a, desperate pass his own authority had arrived. He knew this better than any man alive, for though he had been fluent in excuses, and had even blinded his own adherents and the crowd, he read in the events of Bel's day the prophetic record of nis doom. He had hailed gladly the popular belief that Ashtali had wrought the intervention between Bel and his intended victims, for this at least left his own faiths untouched. If the gods warred within their own lofty circle, and he awhile were indeter- minate as to the result of their conflict, it was none the less the gods who struggled, and he was none the less their minister. But now the worn, an whom the populace in their rude faith had identified with their own best-loved deity, sat side by side with Wenegog's declared and open enemy. The king protected Heur- tan — Heurtan, and David, and this strange ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS 171 new arrival whom the people worshipped, had charge of Wankard — the future king would be bred in the new faith — everywhere, look where he would, the clouds of dreadful night seemed rolling up. No power of man could bid them back, but the gods did all things according to their will. He would speak for them, and for his own ambitions^ and the loves and hatreds that became him and were a part of him. * Thee, Woerex,' he said, raising his gaunt hand high in the air, and holding it there waving and hovering like a bird of prey above some meaner, timid creature of the fields — ' thee, Woerex, do I smite with a curse. Thou hast heard the voice of autho- rity and thou hast not obeyed. Therefore thy sword shall break in battle, thy right arm shall shrink, and thou shalt go headless to the Nethergloom.' The man went ashen, and his comrades fell away from him. Wenegog's voice reached all ears, and the crowd stood palpitating. ' Aefor,' continued Wenegog, falling back into hie own stern self-command, and sin- 172 ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS gling man by man by name and gesture, * Daelchru, Isombar, Baeg, Zoelmendak, Tol- hani, seize yonder man and bind him.* * Elangor, lad/ sang out old Roedweg, ' come hither to thy dad's side. And thou, old Sermat, out iron, and see who lays a hand on him the king hath given me to guard.' The two on whom he called — the one ruddy-bearded and bjue-eyed, the other griz- zled and somewhat bent, but stalwa/rt still — ran towards hi in and set themselves on either side of him. Seeing them standing there, the chieftains who bad stepped forward to obey Wenegog's orders paused. It was not that they feared the httle force before them, though few would have thoiiglit it a pleasant pastime to provoke lioedweg to fight, but the old war- dog's appeal to the authority of the king set a restraining hand upon them. ' Let no blood be shed for me,' said David, rising and passing between liis guard and the reluctant advance of his assailants. ' Art wel- come,' he cried to Wenegog — ' art welcome to this poor body, thou man of evil deeds. Ninety years and odd have I worn this bur- ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS 173 then of the flesh, and I will lay it down right gladly.' Eoedweg set a mighty hand upon his shoulder and drew him away. The dawn of battle laughed already in his eyes. ' Stand back, old Valour,' he said, with a half-admiring scorn. ' There is no v^ord of thee in this. The king hath bidden me guard thee, and I follow the king while my joints hold together.' BcrxeLhold had scarce eyes for anythiru^ but Vreda, who had ariser. and now stood in perfect calm, with one hand caressing Wan- kard's clustering curls. Barxelhold's soul offered but a poor native soil for the growth of any faith, but slie had been bred to un- (juesiioning belief, and though they touched her but lightly and rarely, the spirits of air and earth and flood and fire were thick about her to her apprehension. Of what element the woman before her was born she could not guess, but all things marked her — her calm and her power alike — as a being of another sphere. Wenegog's voice roused Barxelhold from m 174 ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS her pii^occupation. The men he had chosen came slowly on, as if, instead of counting six to three, they had been outnumbered fifty- fold, checked by the invocation of the king's name. - * Do my bidding ! * cried Wenegog, releasing the rage which seethed within him. * Him that lags shall the gods deal with.' The six advanced sword in hand, and the three, sword in hand, awaited them. The assailants by instinct widened out and ap- proached two and two against their opposers. Barely six paces apart they paused, quick foot, keen eye, staunch hand, all ready, and every man strung from head to foot. And whilst each man watched warily for his chance, and each brace parted slowly in preparation for a simultaneous rush, Yreda walked between, and the swords drooped. * Laggards and cowards I ' shrieked Wene- gog. ' Shall I do the work I set ye to ? * He stormed through the open line and stood before Vreda like a figure of stone. Her mild eyes dwelt on his with the overmastering force of knowledge and pity he had felt before. ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS 175 There was neither fear nor anger in her look — nothing but that awful inscrutable calm of knowledge and of pity. There seemed nothing secret from it. It pierced him to the soul. Cowed as he was, he knew that to recoil again before her was to lose all power. He saw the Blasphemer's triumph, and the head- long fall of the gods, and his old age dis- honoured, and his blood went venomous. * Cut her down,' he groaned, in a voice scarce audible to those about him. ' Slay her.' Not a man moved. But Barxelhold, drawn by some irresistible fascination, fluttered to Wenegog's side and clung to him. Thoughts tumultuous and inconi^ruous throncjed and surged upon her, and slie saw her enemy and her saviour, a rival and a goddess, in the self- same flash of time. * My curses on every one of ye ! * cried Wenegog. ' Bel's tire on every faithless heart m the coward crowd. Slay her ! Cut he" down I ' * Wouldat slay me, Wenegog ? ' asked Vrr% 176 ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS in that untroubled voice which fell like a heal- ing dew upon the hearts of all that heard it save the two who stood before her. * Re- member I * She looked from one to the other, and as if her glance had power to draw their eyes together they turned, each caught and entan- gled in the other's gaze. And by some dread- liil instinct each saw the face of the dying Vreda as she lay upon her couch, and their eyes took and gave a light of horror as they read each the other's memory. To the rest who heard the word it brought some remembrance, sweet or sad, if it were no more than the face of the mother who laughed with them in infancy, or the sound and odour of the clods that fell upon a comrade slain in battle. Wenegog had no power to struggle fur- ther, and resigned himself to an impotent rage. Then for one wild instant the thought touched him, what if the popular dream were true, and this woman were really Ashtali.? He had tnreatened her with death, and his faith in his oM-n creed was profound enough to make thii ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS 177 an unspeakable fear to him. The thought passed almost as quickly as it came, but his fear remained behind. The six and the three stood confronting each other with drawn swords, and Vreda faced Barxelhold, and Wenegog between, when Feltor emerged from the great hall, and look- ing haggardly about him, saw the signs of fray beginning or ended. He moved swiftly forward. * What is this ? Swords drawn ? At whose order ? ' * At his and mine,' said Eoedweg, pointing his blade at Wenegog. ' 'Twas thy command to safeguard this old tonguester, and 'twas his to have him bound.' * Wenegog,' said Feltor, turning upon him sternly, * we will speak of this hereafter. Go thy way.' He looked about him with a surly majesty, and at a sign the swords went back to the girdles of their wearers. * Listen all ! ' he cried, raising his right hand. * Who- so layeth a finger upon this man to his hurt shall die.' The chieftains saluted and withdrew, ^ l^lfl 178 ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS leaving the king and queen, the Arch-Druid and Vreda, standing there alone. Wenegog masked his fear and wrath by a suprenae effort. * Wilt lose thy seat in Eeanhola for this heretic outcast, Feltor? Be it so. Let the gods judge betwixt thee and me.' Then Vreda spoke, turning her calm face upon the king. *Thou hast done well, Feltor, and hast done more than as yet thou knowest.' She turned towards Wenegog. ' For thee, 1 know not what may await, for the mercy of God is infinite; but for thee, poor queen, the light shineth even now.* Then with an infinite gentleness she took Barxelhold by the hand, and she, yielding to the touch, advanced a step towards Feltor. * Forgive her,' said the tender voice. ' Thou hast need of much forgiveness.' What influence, that pierced and soothed at once, ran through her own wanton heart Barxelhold could not tell, but she looked at Feltor with appealing eyes, and tears dripped down her face. ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS 179 * Feltor, forgive me.* The king stood with averted eyes, and there was a visible throbbing in his throat. The re-clothed soul, calm, full of pity and forgiveness, spoke again : ' Forgive her.* Feltor's bared breast heaved tumultuously, and he turned towards Barxelhold. His own ruth was free of passion. He was not bred to pity or forgiveness, and his manhood fought against the softer influences which persuaded him, but at the sight of those repentant tears and at the thrill of that angelic voice he melted. His hand stretched out uncertainly, and lin- gered, half withdrawn. Barxelhold bowed her head in fear and shame, and then the hand fell softly upon her yellow hair, and she knew herself pardoned. The forgiving hand w'^ withdrawn so swiftly that she knew not what to understand. Feltor, turning away, had rushed to Wankard, and now, seizing him and Hfting him high in his strong hands, bore him towards Barxelhold and set him at her feet. The queen stooped and kissed him in a rain of tears. Ha ^^m i8o ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS * He is thine, Feltor/ she said, * and he shall be to me as if he were mine own.' Feltor took the lad again, and lifting him to his shoulder cried aloud, with a wild break in his voice : * Coerleans I Behold him that shall be king after me I * At tliis the people pressed forward with ulad cries again and again repeated, and Barx- elhold stealing furtively to Vreda's side knelt and kissed her hand. 'Teach me,* she half sobbed, half whis- pered, ' teach me the secret of thy peace.' -,i Wenegog turned away, deaf and blind, and the crowd fell back to make a passage for him. He strode straight homewards, and liad reached the sacred grove before he was aware of a rapid halting step and a heavy breathing behind him. When the sounds touched him consciously lie stopped and turned. His pursuer paused — one of the hermit priests of Bel, a ghastly half-nude creature, cicatrised everywhere with old wounds, filthy, with matted -lair and beard, and eyes half insane. ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS l8i * Wouldst have thy will, ma;ster ? ' *Who will not have his will when he may ? ' said Wenegog. The weird thing drew a knife from its sheath, and holding it cautiously in his shak- ing hands, set a thumb quivering neslr its point, and waited with bared teeth, staring at the high priest through his red-;rimmed eyes. ' A touch is enough,* he said — * a scratch. Break but the skin — 'tis all over.* *Thou knowest the man?' asked Wenegog, smiling grimly. * Ay ! ' said the other ; ' David the Blas- phemer. Speak the word.' * The word is spoken,' Wenegog answered. On the evening of that day Yreda and David sat together on the hillside near the Saint's cave. Peace was in the air, and deep peace "svas at her heart, when out of the silence and warmth of the tranquil solitude the shadow of an undefined fear grew slowly. Her aged companion spoke, and his voice found words and meaning for her dread. e> IMAGE EVALUATION TEST TARGET (MT-3) A ^/ ^^ fef f/. 1.0 I.I 11.25 11* 12.8 M 2.2 U ill 1.6 P /i <^ /2 'c-1 a A // c? / /J. Photographic Sciences Corporation m iV \\ % V 23 WEST MAIN STREET WEBSTER, N.Y 14580 (716) 872-4S03 r O t° <\ 0\ > .u< 1^ iir w :i i * 1 Ilk C7A^£ TRAVELLER RETURNS * Daughter, ere long thou wilt be lonely. The day of my release is near.* Then, as it were, the bonds of the flesh fell from her, and her spirit beheld the things that were to come. And she answered only with a renewal of her peace : * Father, 1 know it.' |1 ! I ' If 1 H ■:'r % I ii ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS lO CHAPTER Xn. A GBOUP of Osweng's Lennian followers stood disconsolately about the house of Hanun. Their master had ordered them to meet him at early morning, and here already was broad forenoon, and as yet no sign of him. Hanun, who should have assisted in the enterprise upon which they were em- ployed, whatever it might prove to be, had been found near death, and a Druid of his own craft having been hastily summoned, had dressed his wound and still sat with him. Whilst the Lennians wondered at their master's absence the Druid emerged from the hut and besought their help for the removal of Hanun to the open air. ' He is dying then ? ' said one of them. * I know not as yet,' the Druid answered ; * but his time is not long.' f: § •t I j i i IHi V ^H. ll : In ii i 1 1 ! ; t ■ j i 1 ■i ■t f' i ') Til: -' 'i'^ ■ ill ^' . ^'iij • M£ h . 184 {?a:e traveller returns The Lennians assisted in the preparation of a couch of branches and skins beneath the spreading boughs of a solitary oak which stood neai* at hand, and this being done, followed the Druid into the hut. They passed a length of unbleached felt under the body of the wounded man, and bore him to the shadow of the tree and laid him down. He was conscious, and as they moved with him he groaned feebly. When they had set him on the couch he lay staring with wide and sunken eyes at the depth of shadow over- head. There had been a great effusion of blood — his robe was heavily clotted with it, and his face and hands were of a dull and chalky white. When he had lain awhile he began to signal with those sunken eyes of his, and his pale lips moved ever so Uttle. The attendant Druid kneeled beside him and set his ear to Hanun's lips. *Thinkest,* the wounded man panted, a word at each laboured breathing, * thinkest — there is — aught — beyond — this — life ? ' The Druid started and looked at him with ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS «5 a stricken countenance. Then he waved the Lennians away, and moistened Hanun's pallid lips with water before he answered. *Ha8t doubt of it ? ' he asked, wondteringly. The suffering eyes signalled—* Yes.* * Strange,* said the other, ' and at this hour most strange.' The eyes asked why. * Is not Ashtali returned to earth again? Ay, and without that, hast felt, wrestling with Bel or with Odan for curse or blessing, the god gtrike through thy bosom ? * The weak bead rolled slightly from side to side with a des- pairing ' Never ! * — plain as a spoken word. '" With these eyes have I seen the Nethergloom and these ears have heard the roarings of the prisoners. Yea, and I have seen Eeanhola and kings at feast there, and have heard their goodly singing.' The pale lips moved again, and Hanun breathed a single word : * Dreams.' So Hanun lay and stared at Death as one looks at a wall, seeing nothing beyond it. The live beast wounded lay in some such pain as his ; died as he was dying, rotted, dissolved. I< ' |S6 ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS flew abroad in vile odours, made the grass grow rank, and vanished in that wise, drawn into earth and air. Man went the same pro- gress to a foul decay, and the earth drew a like nourishment and sweetness from him. He had known these things from childhood. Why should he strive to make certainty un- certain, and change the whole current of things because he lay dying? He philoso- phised in his own fashion. The blood was the life, and in them in whom it ran lustily dwelt courage. It was the ebbing of the vital tide which laid this chill and fear upon his heart. Whilst he lay thinking thus, and seeming moment by moment to grow feebler, those who were near him beheld a serf, great of limb, who with bent head and shoulders strode towards them with a heavy burden on his back. The fellow came nearer, iron collared, kilted to the knee in oxskin, and other- wise naked from head to foot. The burthen he bore became visible as the figure of a man, and in a while the Lennians recognised their chieftain Osweng. The serf, striding with huge ungainly steps, bore his load to the ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS It7 door of Hanun's hut, and would there have shot it to earth like a faggot of wood, but that two of Osweng's men ran forward in time and caught their master as his feet touched the turf. 'How comes this?' demanded Osweng's chief man. * Ask the king/ the serf answered sulkily. * Twas he commanded me hither.' The brute stared about him bruteUke, not cruel, nor pitying, nor curious, wiped the sweat from his brow with liis great hairy arm, and slouched away again, his shoulders still bent as if beneath their bmtl.en. The Lennians stripped off their cloaks to make ' a couch for Osweng. One ran for water, whilst another severed the thongs which still bound the chieftain's wrists. A third untied the knots of silken stuff which fastened the plaits of his hair, and all his men busied themselves with helpful offices about him. They bared his bruised limbs and body, and wondered how he had come by his in- juries. He writhed and groaned at every touch, but was at once too anguished and ni* I , l> ' l! I i88 ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS confused to answer any of the inquiries put to him. One of Osweng's train turned upon the druid. * Will he live, Meneg ? ' * Like enough,' Meneg answered. * He hath youth, but he hath been sore mis- used.' Hanun meanwhile, to judge by the colour of his lips and the laboured weight of his breath, seemed passing faet away. There were moments when he seemed to swoon from consciousness, and Meneg stooping over him twice or thrice laid a hand upon his heart, and each time shook his head with more con- vincing emphasis of despondency. At the last, watched attentively by the others, he drew a knife from his girdle, and walking de- liberately to an oak sapling near at hand, he cut from its slender trunk — which was no thicker than two of a man's fingers — imme- diately below the first forking of a branch, a piece of not more than three inches in length. He peeled off the bark with much delicacy, and then returning to Hanun, laid the piece ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS 189 the , he de- mand, IS no ime- ih, a igth. ;acy, )iece of oak upon the blood-stained bandage of his wound. The sceptic opened his eyes and looked at him with a wry and sickly smile. * Useless/ he breathed faintly. * Another fable 1 ' Meneg lifted his hands in pious grief, and walked towards the river, which was distant but a hundred paces. There he divested himself of his robe, and holding the piece of oak in both hands, waded into the stream. Except for the motions caused by the passage of his body the surface of the river seemed to sleep. It lay in glassy reaches, marked here and there by a curving line which had scaiire a semblance of movement in it. It was the very full of the tide, and the stream was at a level pause. Meneg chose its precise centre as nearly as he could judge, and with murmured prayers and incantations laid the morsel of wood gently on the surface of the water. It swayed awhile to and fro before his k.reast, with a movement as slight and regular as if his breath had acted on it, and then slowly \ ti 190 ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS '\ I: ) ill ! !: and steadily sailed down stream. He watched it with a look more and more desponding and downcast, when it stopped, hovered, and in obedience to a new impulse, sailed back a^ain in a wide sweeping line, and was borne after many trembling vicissitudes to the shore, at a point higher than that at which it had been committed to the wave. The druid with smiles and thanksgivings waded to the bank, reassumed his robe, and hastened back towards Hanun, carrying the bit of oak in his hand. 'Wilt hve, Hanun I' he cried gladly. • The augury is good 1 ' Hanun returned no sign of answer, and Meneg looking upon him became doubtful of the authority of the augury. He was even whiter than before, and a broad dark band beneath either eye gave ghastly force to his pallor. The day passed on with intervals of hope and despair. Passers-by brought news of the events of the morning, garbled and distorted, but showing clearly in the main that the two injured men were victims of the king's ven- geance. Night stole on slowly and wearily. ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS 191 and slowly and wearily passed by, till in the gray of dawn, when Meneg and the chief man of Osweng's guard sat dozingly at watch to- gether, the druid heard the rustle of a moving garment, and, awaking with a start, looked up and saw that strange woman whom the people called AshtaU, and behind her, grave and grey, the foreign heretic and blasphemer. Vreda had stretched out a hand towards Meneg's shoulder, but he arose and escaped from her. * Word hath been brought us of these wounded/ she said. 'This aged man hath great skill in simples.' David without a word raised a wallet from his shoulders, and opening it drew out a little phial of clouded glass. Hanun lay gasping with baked lips wide open, and the Saint kneeling beside him poured a few drops of the contents of the phial upon his tongue. The wounded man's eyes opened and he looked up with a glance of no recognition. Next David turned to Osweng, and, having examined him, produced from his wallet another phial with a wide mouth covered I' '1!|, i|i i) ' ■4' 111' m \ • m tfi ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS with a thong-bound akin. He gave thii to Vreda, who, kneeling on the grass, withdrew the skin covering and applied an unguent to Osweng's bruises. At first the ointment stung him, and he awoke with imprecations, but in a while its soothing influences became appa- rent, and his oaths softened into murmurs of recovered ease. David insinuated a hand gently beneath his head, and poured between his lips a few drops of the cordial he had already administered to Hanun. Osweng's eyes brightened, and a tinge of colour flut- tered to his cheek. * A brave liquor,' he said feebly. * Give me more of it.' *Ingoodtime,'David answered, *butnot yet.' The Saint watched Hanun carefully, and from time to time administered his cordial. * Thou hast taken them in hand,' said Meneg jealously, ^and thou shalt abide the issue.' ^ The issue,' said Vreda, ' is in the hands of Him who guideth all things, and not with thee or with us.* The druid wondered within himself that ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS «W these words did not anger him. After his one protest he sat somewhat sulkily aside, and allowed Vreda and her companion to do as they would. He watched the Saint won- deringly whilst he prepared the expresse«i juices of beaten meat, mixed with hot water, and flavoured with coarse salt and herbs, and saw him administer the strengthening broth thus made to each of his patients. It touched him dimly now an(^ tl en to think that David and Hanun wrr^^ at bitter enmity, and as hour after hour went by and no cessation came in the tender care which Vreda and the Saint bestowed, he was more and more amazed. But six months ago Hanun had put to death ten of David's most trusted adherents under horrible tortures, and three months later had slain twenty and odd others. Whenever Wenegog's will had called for a refined and ingenious cruelty against the pro- fessors of the new faith Hanun had been his inventor, and Hanun's pitiless heart had put his own inventions into use. And now here was the man, in defiance of all nature, nursing his relentless persecutor, and willingly . '♦ w i ' ' 5 ' H^ »94 3 jewelled buskins and placed hid feet in the vessel. 'At a hunt of the wild bull?' said the Prefect with eyebrows languidly raised. ' At a hunt of the wild bull, Illustrious/ returned Osweng. ' This is little gallant, even for a barbarian, said Varonius. * Thy servants, whom I have questioned, told me that the dame was fair to look on. Ah I a misapprehension ! The wild bull was Feltor — is that the name ? lie no more to me, Osweng.' The Lennian returned no answer, but lay silent in his confusion. * And so,' pursued the Roman, daintily fanning himself, * thy concupiscence hath drawn mat- ters into this unpleasant knot Had I known there was a handsome woman there I had taken heed of that red poll of thine, and chosen a messenger of another colour. Tell me now what thou hast seen, and lie no more. Give me the number of their fighting men.' 'Nigh upon ten thousand, Illustrious,' answered Osweng. * Work for half a legion,' said Varonius. • And how armed ? ' ;■! r m mi' 304 ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS V'' *■ Mainly with spears, swords, and axes. Slingers they have and archers, most Eespect able, but of little account either for skill or numbers.* Varonius began to question closely of roads, of the disposition of forces, of the num- ber of inhabitants of this and that village and township, and Osweng, thrown upon in- vention, stammered and halted through his answers, and so involved himself in contra- dictions, that the Prefect, who, in spite of his affected graces was a born general as well as a warrior of proved hardiness and courage, grew wroth with him and cut him short. ' Thou hast wasted time and chance,' he said, not deigning to show anger in his voice or manner, but delicately fanning himself, sniffing at a box of perfumed ointment mean- while, and now and again rubbing a little of the unguent into his palms. * I had looked to thee to be of use, but naught pays for naught, and naught will pay thee for thy services.' 'One thing there is, most Respectable,' said Osweng submissively. 'The land is so divided by the new faith that the people will ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS «>$ scarce grow together even to cast out a com- mon enemy.* * The new superstition? Folly 1 There are a score or two perchance who have turned.' * Nay, great sir, 'twas so while Davit? the Nazarene was alone. But there is with him now a woman most wondrous for beauty and for power. They were burning threescore and fifteen to Bel upon Bel's day when she came between, and with her mere word stayed it. And me she cured miraculously of my hurts, and one Hanun that was stabbed by the king she snatched from death by a potion whereof no man had heard. And the people are now wiXh. her, and the king giveth her protection, and Wenegog the Druid is against her, and the whole people is divided. And Roedweg, a chief of the Coerleans, greatly be- loved and followed by the people, hath sworn on the woman's side.' * Roedweg ? ' said Varoniiis. * A great giant of a man, fawn-coloured and grey in the beard ? ' ^The same, great patron,' answered Os- weng. 'illif^ ao6 ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS * He was a hostage here in Deva for awhile. I remember him. They grow good thew and bone by Surfled, if he be a sample. And the woman ? What like is she ? ' * I know not, most Potent,' said Osweng, ' how I should speak of her if I spoke in mine own tongue. And in a tongue whereto I am strange it is harder. She is like milk of her complexion, and for her eyes, they are grey and look strangely within a man. And for her stature there is nothing strange ; but for her movement most goodly and fine, and her voice very gracious and delicate ; and because of her voice and eyes, as I do think, hath her will even of her enemies.' * Shalt be curled and barbered,' said Varo- nius, ' and set as a girl ministrant to Venus. The rogue but speaketh of a woman and straightway forgetteth the bruises his hunt of the wild bull hath cost him. I will send for this' miracle, and have speech of her.' * I know not. Illustrious, if it will be safe to send less than a legion,' said Osweng. ' * The Ooerleans are fierce.' ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS 187 * The woman ard the Nazarene are here in Deva,' returned Varonius condescendingly. * In Deva I' cried Oswengin astonishment. * Calm thine ardours, good Lennian/ said Varonius. ' Even if she had taken that red head of thine for a beacon, she will not reach her guiding fire if she be half what thou hast painted her.* * Permit, most Re. ;ectable, that I ask what she doth in Deva ? ' ' One Eumenius, a scribe, lieth here dying,* answered Varonius carelessly. ' He is of the new superstition, and a pervert of David's. Whereby thou mayst see,' he added with a touch of vanity, * that little passeth without my knowledge, whether a faithless fool be tossed by a bull at Surfled, or a pretty fanatic visiteth an old dorard in Deva.' As the noonday heat passed by, Deva awoke little by little, and in the evening the whole place was roaring and bustling with life. From the gardens of the Prefectorium, by the Augustinian Gate, along the Augush tinian Way, across the forum to the Valerian mm 2o8 OJ^E TRAVELLER RETURNS Way, past the batHs to the Devanian Gate, through that to the Dee, and back again, flowed two diverse and opposing tides of people, whilst the intersecting Antonine Eoad was as thronged as the others. Idleness and pleasure reigned everywhere, and two out of every five who thronged the streets were Roman soldiers. The rough- shirted unar moured recruit was here, and the bearded veteran in full splendour of uniform, who would not dofi* his cuirass axid helmet even on a summer evening and when ofi* duty. On the granite steps leading to the baths two Lennian bards were singing to the heed- less crowd of the glories of Caerlheon in the days of Arvireg, and in an opposite space, to the huge amusement of a mob of spectators, a Briton and a Dacian belaboured each other with spiked staves. In front of the Theatre of the Comedians of Flavins a gambler had set up his table, and, challenging all comers to try their fortune with the little golden balls, did a roaring trade. Above all other noises could be heard the tinkling sound of the triangles, played by the dancing-girls — ^now ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS 209 performing in the outer stalls, and inviting passing soldier^ ':o the cosier inner courts. In the midst of the singing, laughing, quarrelling crowd Varonius walked unknown, accompanied by his trusted henchman, Mar- cus Helba. They were closely shrouded in hoods and mantles of a dark woollen stuff, and, strolling slowly about the streets, ob- served everyihing without let or hindrance. Daylight was fading fast but was not yet extinct, and the lamps about the shops and stalh twinkled with an uncertain brightness. The two observers reached the gate which led to the Dee, and avoiding the conflicting pres- sure of the crowd, which the purposed dis- guise of their own identity made troublesome and occasionally more than a little tyrannous, they slipped into the narrow by- street which lay within the fortified wall of the town. Here the quiet and the dusk fell with a re- freshing coolness, and only the sound of their own footsteps and the tramp and interchange of challenge of the sentinels upon the wall broke the dull murmur into which the vary- ing voices of the crowd had fallen. »l 2IO ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS \ "H The two walking in silence followed the shadowy by-street until they reached the watch-tower, and were challenged by the guard. Varonius for sole answer raised his hood, and passed on. The guard fell back with deep salutations. Just beyond the watch-tower the street widened, and by the side of a small shrine erected by the votaries of Mercury, the two came to a halt. 'It is here, great Prefect,' said Helba, 'pointing to the opposite house. In this more open space the light feU clearer. There was a faint sound of move- ment from the courtyard of the house Helba had signalled, and as the two stood in silence the doors were thrown open, and a procession emerged upon the street — men and women marching slowly and with bent heads, by twos and threes. Varonius and his companion re- tired into the shadow of the shrine. * How was it I knew not of these num- bers ? ' whispered the Prefect. * I was told of a mere handful, and threescore have passed already.' * ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS 211 *I knew not of it, Illustrious,' replied Helba. * It was not so a week agone.' The procession filing out of the court- yard was broken for an instant, and those at the rearward paused and turned. Then with muffled footsteps came six men bearing a dark- draped figure on a bier. Some thirty or forty men and women followed, and at the last came a man and a woman at a little dis- tance from the rest. Varonius . clipped Helba by the arm. * Is that the woman ? * * Yes,' whispered Helba. Vreda's eyes seemed to Varonius to search the shadow and to fall on his. She and the Saint passed on, side by side, and the proces- sion wound through a postern gate ^t no great distance, and when once it was clear of the city the silence of its mournful march was broken by a low chant. ' This new faith makes headway fast,' said Varonius, * though it hath but a shabby allowance of deities. Didst thou note the woman, Helba ? That hot fool was right for once. She is a wonder. What a figure would r 2 m 212 ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS she make in a triumph I I warrant that face hath won more converts than all the exhorta- tions of the grizzled old anatomy who went beside her. For thirty years these savage Coerleans have held us at bay, and now me thinks the time is come. What said the Master Nazarene himself? " A house divided against itself cannot stand." Let but these dissensions work awhile, and we shall have them. Hark thee, Helba. There is rare hunt ing out yonder. I will see for myself. Pick me half a score of trusty men.' * Ten men, Dlustrious ? ' demanded Helba. * It will be desperate with so small an escort.' * As thou wilt,* said Varonius with a smile. * Choose me twelve.* ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS J13 CHAPTEE XIV. Vreda had but newly returned afoot from Deva, and was travel-worn. The burden of the flesh lay cruelly upon her,, and her soul was heavy because of the pain and weariness of her body. It was yet in the heat of the afternoon, and the low clouds which hung but just above the tree-tops prisoned the air, and made the mere act of breathing a weari- ness. There was a leaden yearning at her heart, and her suflerings tempted her as if they would turn her inward hunger into a regret. But she would not have it so, and of set purpose she rejoiced in the pains she bore, since they were a part of the work she had chosen and not to be separated from it. But however she stoutened her heart — whether with prayers, or with the thought of the spreading of peace and light among her own '■f IN it r i i 314 ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS people, or with the knowledge of the rest which lay before her — it still ached in fleshly weakness. The unclothed soul would have gone in pure gladness because of the blessings which had been granted it, but clad in the sorrows of the body grew subject to their tyrannies. She bethought her of the estate from which she was translated, and how with the mere thinking of it, and desiring it, her soul had blended with the soul of Kalyris, and she longed again for the refreshment of that dear companionship, and the earthly years which lay between her and its renewing stretched into a desert of days which seemed impassable to the heart. And slowly, as she sat with closed eyes and burning feet, she became aware of a certain gentle inward radiance which so filled her that there w^s no more room for pain or sorrow. Then, as it had been with her whilst she had been free of the body, she saw, not as with earthly eyes, but with the percep- f > . f che spirit, the soul of Kalyris, grown for beauty, and for the love which la: i ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS ai$ dwelt within it. And as the soul of Kalyris flashed upon the soul of Vreda she knew of an estate of peace most infinite, and of a glory beyond imagining. She knew, moreover, that Kalyris dwelt in that estate, and had full assurance that herself and many whom she had already persuaded,- would be raised into it at such times as the travails of their hfe should be accomplished. She was never again aware of the presence of Kalyris in the days of her second pilgrimage, but the influences of this vision rested with her, and the bare memory of it overcame all pains. It had seemed to endure but for a moment, yet when she became again aware of the world the clouds had already broken in rain, and the sinking sun shone on freshened verdure from a clear expanse of sky. It was the voice of David that recalled her. * If thou art refreshed, daughter, we will go down and have speech with Hanun.' Vreda arose and they set out together. 'I am not willing to be moved too easily,' said the Saint,^ * for I have known some who gave themselves up to delusions, and went ii-'^ I' i i ■■ •! II Ui 316 ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS astray after folly of their own devising. Yet I await a sign, and I have a persuasion that to-night it will be given me. And I linow of a certainty that the end of my pilgrimage is near.' They found Hanun reclining by the wall of his own house, half dozing in the level rays of the sun. He awoke at their approach, and answered the Saint's salutation of ' Peace be with thee ' with a smile. ' Folk will scarce have it so,* he said. * There is like to be httle peace in Surfled for a while.' » ' Hath aught happened newly ? ' the Saint inquired. * Wenegog hath sent at great cost and trouble to the holy wells of Caer-Pallador,' said Hanun with a quaint smile, out of which all the cruelty had faded. ' He hath sent word that I am to await him at close of day, and to be sprinkled therewith for my better recovery. It is brotherly meant, but strife will come of it.' * Strife must be,' answered Dafid, * but woe unto him by whom it cometh.* ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS »I7 * I say not so,' returned Hanun, * since to my poor thinking it cometh mainly by thee. I wish thee well, friend Sanctity, and have no grudge against thee, as how should I have ? I tell thee that I am well satisfied to be back a-looking on green trees and sunlight, and had never a mind for a shelf in a rock with mag- gots for companions.' * Wilt refuse his heathen rites?' asked David eagerly. ' Yea,' said Hanun with contrasting tran- quillity. * I will lend my face no more to Bel and his burnings. As for faiths I care but little. I have questioned of many. But whether it be that I am old and have gone cold-blooded I say not, but I have no desire to harm anything.' * Art blind ? ' asked David. His voice could thunder when he would, but he spoke now with the tender appeal of a father to a child, and his tones were gentle and caressing. * Seest not that the Spirit of God is working within thee?' *I know what I know,' said Hanun, still smiling, * and am content. Hast changed me 3l8 ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS ii'ilfii' betwixt ye. I had as lief have been burned as have the king's son touch me in kindness after the things I had done to him, and now the child's prattle soundeth sweet in mine ears, and naught grieveth me save that I cannot have my days again.' ' The hour I have awaited I ' cried the Saint in a loud voice, suddenly. A strange fire burned in his eyes, and he fixed his glance upon Hanun, and reached out a hand above him. *Thou knowest it not as ye^ but thou art he that shall carry the burthen I have borne.' His gaze seemed to turn inward, and he stood like a man in a trance. * 'Twixt thee and me, daughter, there shall be no farewells, for the time of our parting is no more than as a drop to yonder river to the time of companion- ship that awaiteth us. I shall not see to- morrow's sun.' * Man I ' cried Hanun, struggling feebly to his feet. * How knowest thou that ? ' 'I know it of a surety,' David answered with a great calm. * It hath been given to many to know the hour of their release. Paul, my master, who laid hands upon me in Antioch, ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS ai9 Spoke of the hour of his departure thirty and three days before it ; and Peter, of holy memory, spake even of the manner of his death, knowing that he should be crucified head downwards.* Hanun sank back upon his couch, and Vreda, with a gesture altogether womanly, laid both hands upon the Saint's shoulders, and looked up into his face with an angelic sweet- ness of affection. The old man's softened and exalted countenance glowed in the rays of the sinking sun. * Years seventy and two have passed,' he said, ' since these old ears heard the noise of hosannahs in Jerusalem. I shall hear them again, but with no earthly ears.' He stooped and laid both hands upon Hanun's head. * Thou art called and chosen. The change is not yet, but God hath His own time.' He turned away with no further word, wrapping his robe about him, and Vreda walked with him. Even as they turned, Wene- gog, with a great priestly following, rounded a wooded knoll, and strode towards them, dark against the illuminated pallor of the western aao ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS sky. The Saint turned a solemn glance upon him, and spoke in passing : * Peace be with thee.' * I had rather the pest than thy blessing/ the Arch-Druid answered. His followers drew their robes aside with looks of hate and scorn, and the combatants parted to meet no more. David led the way towards his own abiding place, and had reached deep into the wood before he spoke again. * Daughter, here we part.* He stood still, and Vreda clung to him with tears, seeing her own loneUness before her. * Nay,' he said, ' rather rejoice with me that the hours of my tribulation are at an end. And with that they also parted. 1 i 1 % (, ■ ■■'1 ■ ^ M^, 1 Wenegog striding home alone with black rage at his heart, cursing Hanun for lii;? apos- tasy, heard behind him in the sacrea f,rove the hurried halting step and quickened breath- ing which had arrested him at the same spot a month before. Tlie ghastly creature was here again, knife in hand. ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS 331 * What now ? * asked Wenegog. ' It is done/ the other panted. * With this ? ' said Wenegog, pointing at the knife. * None escape from it, and 1 struck deep.' * Give it to me.' The man offered it, holding it gingerly by the haft as if he dreaded it. Wenegog accepted it, and moved a pace nearer. * None escape from it P ' he said, scrutinising the blade in the dim light. * None, master, none.* The Arch-Druid struck swift and deep, and the man fell without a groan. * Wilt tell no tales,' said Wenegog, looking darkly down. He threw the knife into the underbrush and walked away. w lu- 232 ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS CHAPTER XV. i I 1 i? 1 Hanun lay pondering that night in his own house alone. His subtle mind threaded hither and thither in a maze of thought, and he was eager to find his way through his own imaginings. He had doubted everything, and the beginning of faith in him brought with it something of the shock a candid and open soul receives when suspicion is first thrust upon it. The light of the earthenware lamp flickered, and the roof of the room was alternately ruddy and invisible. He had an eye for this as he threaded his own inner- most mazes, and he likened the swift flicker of his n * id to it. So intermittently he saw and did not see. Then the lamp went out, and he lay in darkness, and in the same instant of time the doubts vanished and his mind seemed clothed in light. Whatever ONE TRAVELi^ER RETURNS 223 impulse of heat, or anger, or haste, or fleshly appetite, or spiritual hope had arisen within him any time this forty years he had smUed and sneered it into quiet. His infidelity had reached to the roots of his soul and the fibres of his flesh. He had doubted and derided his own passions, and that twihght devil of incertitude who blends the white of truth and the black of falsehood to one lying grey, had been his lifelong comrade. But now the broad light broke about him, clear, un- dazzling, and would not be derided or denied. He knew — once and for ever. He arose and stepped into the void of night with no feeling of his recent weakness. The broad sky throbbed with stars, and the silence buzzed in his ears. He walked for a long time not noting whither his footsteps led him, until the sound of voices recalled him to himself Then he remembered that the morrow was the day of Hest, the Wardei of the Seasons, and looking to the stars he saw that it was near midnight. A voice challenged him, and he answered ^It is I, Hanun,' and then stood still. ) m H :i|i.!. If i:t V ii' a«4 OA^^ TRAVELLER RETURNS Thirteen of the priests of Hest, naked in the starlight, were grouped about a squared stone on which was set a globe-shaped jar of baked clay. The onlooker knew the ritual, and his eyes recognised details which the dimness would have hidden from one less familiar. He knew the great hammer of granite and its crooked haft of ash. He knew the stone of offering, and could even fancy that he traced the line of the delicate thong which two nude priests held tightly strained on high, exactly over the eastern corner and the western corner of the stone. He saw a third kneeling beneath the line with his faced turned upward and his hands upon the stone. Then the kneeling man spoke. * The star draws near.' Then again after a pause : * Praises to Hest that the promise is fkir. The line shakes not and the skies are clear.' Then again after a pause : ' It is the hour.' One, bent and bearded, laid both hands upon the shaft of the hammer and essayed to lift it. He failed, and having spat upon his .•.},' ONE TRAVEL! ER RETURNS 225 hands essayed again and failed a second time, though he strained his old joints at the effort and quivered from head to foot. ' The day of my ministry is over/ he said, in an aged voice, 'Come hither, Ux- haemhu, that shall be keeper of the hammer. Know, Uxhaemhu, that I, Soerundeg, took the hammer from the hand of Craef, the wolf- toothed, who took it from the hand of Duwon- gar, slayer of the southrons, who took it from the hand of Pawr, the white-eyed, who named the names of three that had gone before him, and the name of Horw, who had it at the beginning — the great Salaekin, the sweet to the gods, the wrapped in the holy savour of tortures. Know also, that thou umyest tell it to him that followeth after thee, that it hath thus been ever for the glory of Hest, and the ripening of the fruits of the earth. That the jar shall be filled with the blood of a youth and a maid. That it shall rest on the stone that Hest set up, and be broken*with the hammer tliat Hest gave unto Horw. That the rite hath not changed from the beginning until now, and shall not change ? • ■ ■ . m t S III i ■m ■ ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS for ever. That they who perform it shall be naked, waiting for the blessing of Hest, as were their forefathers, ere Hest had given them anything, whether of flax, or hide, or wool. These things shalt thou speak to him that folbws after thee, that the memory of them may live in the earth, and that the wrath of Hest may be appeased.' The man who knelt at the stone watched the thong which trembled above him, tightly strung, and all awaited his word. * The star of Hest,' he said after a pause, *is over the stone of Hest. Strike! ' The youthful priest to whom the hammer had been entrusted swung the cutnbrous im- p'Jement high, and, allowing it to fall, crashed the jar into a thousand fragments. The blood the vessel had contained splashed wide, and spotted Hanun's face and raiment as he stood apart. A cry arose, for the helve of the hammer had broken, and the rough stone head of it, spinning with the force of the blow, had struck one of the nude Watchers and had felled him to the ground. There was an end of the invocation, and one of ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS 337 the priests cried out upon Hanun asking what should be done and what the omen might mean. Hanun was silent, looking upon the waste ax^ desolate places of his own spirit. It was as if a whirlwind raged in the desert: all was dark, confused, tormented, till a voice sounded within him like a clarion. * The hammer of Hest. h broken, and the reign of blood is over I * He himself had spoken the words wilh a great cry, and they rang upon the eaiB d his body and his soul. The blood upon his face and hands stung like fire, and filled him with a nameless horror and repulsion. His heart had been knit through with cruelty and the lust of blood, and his recoil from them was like a rending of the flesh. The savour which had been sweetest to him was bitterer than wormwood, and the passion of his pro- test against himself that had been was hke a convulsion. The naked celebrants of the libation to Hest stared upon another in the dim starHght, terrified by the omen and the cry which gave « 2 isS One TkAVELLER RETURNS > tM to it a significance so awful. Hanun turned away and left them to their consternation. He was alone in the midst of the spaces of his soul. The storm raged there no more, and past the cloudy wrack the star of Peace gleamed with a steadfast lustre. And a new heart grew within him, like a little child's for softness, and like a warrior's for courage, and he remembered the words of David — *Thou art hn tb..z. shall carry the burthen I have borne.* Then and there ae cast himself upon his face in an ecstasy, and took the charge laid upon him, and set his past behind him for ever and his purpose before him for ever. And as he moved to arise, filled with the sublime and simple faith and surety of old days, he was aware that his hands lay upon the breast of the dead saint, his forerunner and his father in the faith. He recalled David's prediction : ' I shall not see to-morrow's sun,' and he saw that it was fulfilled. The hermit priest of Bel had struck true to the heart, and the poison of his blade had had no time to fiow through the victim's r 'J' iw ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS 939 veins. So the dead man lay with undisturbed form and face, as if gazing fixedly towards the new abode to which his valorous soul had flown. Hanun knelt beside him, and gazed long and earnestly at his face, peering close to it, reading the dead man's rest and peace. 'Thou knowest more than I,' he said at last, and indeed there shone in the dead man's eyes a very strange and awful look of knowledge of tilings hidden frbm the living. When Vreda had listened to the last words of David, slie moved away with inward heavi- ness and went to her own place. She had found a natural bower by the river-side, where a weeping willow made a dome of green dense enough to afford shelter alike from the heat of the sun and the dews of the night. She slept well guarded here, for night after night those who were drawn by the stories of the wonders of her presence, and those who came in the faith that she could heal their diseases, lay down about her abiding place to await her earliest issuing forth. •■ "A 330 ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS II ■1 II I! ii I'. '• She passed now through the patient throng, women holding out their children to be blessed, and sufferers from many maladies crowding humbly to be touched for healing. Many, secretly touching her robe, had be- lieved themselves cured and had spread abroad the report of her, so that nightly the crowd increased in numbers. But none dared to approach her resting place too near, and when she was weary of moving amongst them she could always withdraw to the soli- tude of her own leafy chamber and the privacy of her own thouprhts. The kind hands healed many pains ; the grave voice, celestial sweet, soothed many griefs ; the new wisdom of the creed of pity and forgiveness sank deep into many hearts wild, untutored, and stony, and hved there like well-springs in a desert. She was weary in body and heart, but none went without the blessing or the counsel craved, and at last she was free to rest. She lay down upon a couch of heather to await what might happen, her mind expectant of intelligence. She was like one who sits in a ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS aji darkened chamber attending the coming of a lamp. There was no sorrow in her mind now because of her parting from David, but more and more a surety of an increased close- ness of companionship. On a sudden the illumination she looked for came. It began with a warmth and sweetness of contentment the like of which she had not known, and she was aware of the immortal essence of her friend, himself, and not another, recognisable as a familiar face. There was no voice or touch, but the clothed spirit and the un- clothed were together in a most dear and intimate communion, and Vreda was av^are of a happiness and a glory not to be de- scribed by man. Then, filled with a tranquil and sacred joy, she arose, and choosing by name six from amongst thobc who slept near her abiding place, she led them to where the body of David lay. I 'i I, «»«v^«vv: aja OA^iT TRAVELLER RETURNS CHAPTER XYI. In the early forenoon the great hall of the palace was cleared for judgment. A heavy stone chair of great antiquity was painfully moved in on rollers by a score of men, and set near the northern wall All implements of everyday use were cleared away, and at the appointed time the king, followed by his chiefs and counsellors, entered and took his seat, to hear petitions, to adjust disputes, and to ordain the punishment of criminals. Barxelhold sat by his side on a seat lower than his own, and the chiefs were grouped on rough oak benches on either hand. Those of greatest age sat nearest to the king, bald and furrowed and snowy-bearded ; and on a block of granite, polished by many centuries of handling, which was set at Feltor's feet, were laid the golden sickle (its haft thickly en- ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS a33 cru8t€'l with black and grey British pearls) and the royal axe of flint, in token of the king's mastership over life and death. Without the hall, and apart from the rest of the soldiery, stood three men beside a block of oak. One of them bore a battle-axe, ready, if need were, to carry out the edict of the king. An aged counsellor, standing behind the king's chair, spokp at a signal from Feltor's hand : * The king sits in jiidgment.* A chieftain waiting at the open door repeated the words, and voice after voice took up the phrase outride until it melted into distance. Complainants and petitioners besieged the door, and were one by one admitted by the guard. But one case had been heard when Hanun presented himself and demanded audience. He had laid aside the white robe of office, with its scarlet band of dignity, and came bare-headed and bare-footed, and attired in such a mantle of coarse wool as David had worn. The change in his face since last he had set foot upon that ground was yet more astonishing than the change in his attire. a34 ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS ' \hmtL\ !te w '■'I . The suave malignity had gone out of it, and it was alight with fervour and sincerity. He strode along the hall unrecognised for a moment, and stood before the king. •Who art thou?* Feltor demanded, though even as his lips shaped the words he knew him. •Hanun,' came the answer; *the son of Soel, and youngest and least worthy of the servants of the Redeemer.' Since BeFs day many conversions had been known ; the king himself was tacitly a Christian ; Barxelhold wavered between two opinions, and but for the fact that she recoiled from publicly opposing her own father, would have decided ; Roedweg and all his house had openly embraced the faith, and many of the chieftains had followed his example. But until now the new creed had met with the deadly and passionate hostility of the priest- hood ; and Ha nun's speech so astounded all who heard it that the king and queen and the assembled counsellors rose in wonder. * Thou ? ' cried Feltor. * Thou— the Priest of the Terrors ? ' ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS a35 * Yea, king/ answered Hanun. * Even I. These hands, foul with the blood of unholy sacrifice, are cleansed. I, unworthy, am c " r^ and chosen, and though it lead me to the scourge, the block, or the fire, I take the road by which God leads me, and bear the burthen my dead master hath laid down.' * Thy dead master I ' * Yea,' said Hanun. * David is dead.* * Dead ? ' cried Feltor, gazing about him as if to seek for a denial of the news. There w' a profound and anxious silence. * How ? ' tLw ung demanded. ' He was slain last night,' Hanun answered. * But a little while earlier he foretold his death, though not the manner of it.' The king's eyes rested on Hanun with a swift suspicion What if he were the murderer, and his conversion a pretence to hide the truth and save himself from vengeance ! The thought stayed but an in- stant, and Feltor glared about him in kingly wrath. j *It shall go ill,' he said, *with him that ' 1 . ■ ElPl^^r 236 ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS hath done this. Said I not that whosoeTer should touch the man to his hurt should die?* As he spoke the guard at the door divided and made way for the entrance of Wenegog, who, followed by a long and imposing pro- cession of priests, walked solemnly into the hall and faced the seat of judgment. He and his followers were in the full priestly panoply which was only assumed on occasions of high ceremonial. At Wenegog's entrance Barxelhold turned and gripped Feltor by the arm. Her husband looked down upon her and saw both fear and appeal in her eyes. *Thinkest thou so? he said grimly. *I also.' Then he kept silence until Wenegog stood before him, with his priestly forces marshalled in the rear. ' What would'st thou here ? ' he asked. Wenegog drew himself to his height, and stretched out a trembling hand. His face was white like wax, and his eyes had grown cavernous. * I, Wenegog, voice of Odan and Bel, aftOT ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS 337 fasting and vigil, and rounds inade of mine own hands in prayer, warn thee with this last warning. Bel is wroth with hunger, and his inwards are like a heated furnace of brass. He roareth for hi*^ due, which hath so long been denied him.' ' And shall be denied him for ever,* cried Feltor. He trembled, half with rage against Wenegog and half with the last remnant of a superstitious fear. He had longed -often of late to break from the ghastly bonds of the creed in which he had been cradled, and that lingering fear had alone withheld him. Now that the words had been spoken he waited with one icy pang of fear to see what would befall him. Then the despised deity taking no vengeance he gathered courage. * Cram Bel's maw with the men of thine own blood^^hirsty craft, if thou wilt I I am sick of thy burnings and slayings, and so long as the king's word goes through the land there shall be an end of them.' Wenegog fixed his eyes upon Feltor's, and held them there unwinkingly. . • Moerwen,' he called. ' Come hither/ 'til., I' .if mi fi'i 238 OA^JF TRAVELLER RETURNS He waited, staring at the king, with his right hand outstretched, and there fell such a silence on the place that the bare feet of the priest who obeyed the Arch-Druid's call were heard clearly on the earthen floor, and the rustle of his raiment as he moved. The priest paused at his master's side, and held out towards him a delicate phial of crystal. Wenegog's hand felt blindly for it, and still he kept his eyes on Feltor's. His long fingers touched the phial and gripped it, and, raising it high, he reversed it and poured its contents on the ground. The king held his place, but Ills countenance changed and he was red and pale by turns. His broad chest heaved with a convulsive labour. ' The gods waste thy life,* said Wenegog, ' as I waste this ! * He ^et fall the phial, which crashed into a hundred glittering fragments, and dropped his hand slowly to hif^ side. Hanun had stood, unobserved by his old master, a little to the rear. His mean garb had disguised him so far that though he was recognised by many of his old comrades, 1 ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS 839 igOg« Wenegog had not even glanced at him. He came forward now and spoke : — * Have no fear. His curse is waste, like the water he has wasted. His word leaveth less trace than the wind.' ' By the gods,' said Wenegog, turning upon him in amazement, * 'tis Hanun ! * There was the beginning of a stir in the hall, and at a single gesture from Feltor's hand it broke into a wild dommotion. The kiag's defiance of the Arch-Druid, and the solemn anathema by which Wenegog had replied, and — heaped on these — Hanun's challenge of the curse, had brought the blood of the listeners and onlookers to fever heat. Feltor choked with rage, and could do no more than thrust a commanding hand towards Wenegog at the instant when Eoedweg's eye encountered his own. Eoedweg strode from his place, and the Druids grouped themselves about their head to oppose him. The swords of the armed men were out on every side, and there was the flash of steel among the ranks of the priests also, but at the mere sight of the prim 340 ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS Ml resolute face of Eoedweg, and the long sword he bore, the Druids faltered. He went straight on, disdainful of them, shouldering right and left, not deigning to look as if he so much as dreamed of their resistance. Eut one more daring or more faithful than the rest faced him and struck out. Eoedweg felled him with a tremendous buffet from the iron hilt of his sword, and the trenchant blade, whistling right and left, cleared a space about him. The chieftains and the guard cast themselves upon the circle, and in the turn of a hand the crowd of priests was disarmed. Eoedweg, seiz- ing Wenegog by the nape of the neck, forced him to the foot of the judgment seat, and there thrust him upon his knees before the king. ' Wilt curse the king?' said Feltor hoarsely. * Seest whither thy power hath gone, Wenegog ? ' Barxelhold threw herself between him and the kneeling figure of her father, and clung to Feltor by the wrists. ' Be not afraid I * he said. * I will not harm him. Stand aside. Thy fangs are broken, old adder I Let him rise, Eoedweg/ Wenegog, released, arose, shaking from %\ ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS 341 not are » head to foot with anger and feebleness of body. His robe was torn, and spotted here and there with blood, for he had knelt upon the fragments of the broken phial. He stood undaunted, and there was more of majesty in his look than in Feltor's. ' I have spoken to thee already,* he said, and turned away. ' For the rest of ye, take refuge beneath your mushroom faith if ye will. Call on the scourged outcast of the Nazarenes, and the voice of Odan shall answer. Yet not of mine accord will I leave ye to doom. Is Odan of yesterday? See ye the very axe that lieth before, the chair of judgment ? Seven score and nine are the generations of the kings and queens in Coerlea since Goer, the son of Odan, gave the axe to Leng, the father of kings, and the Coerleans became a people. Where is the faith of old days? The men that went before ye raised a grove to Odan, and nine generations died ere the oaks were grown. Was it yesterday that Moedek, the son of Bel, built the ring of the gods and the ring of hfe about the ring of sacrifice? Nay, but ye 34S ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS know that no man can reDi^mber a tale of the time when the rings were not. For mine own part I am old, and ere long shall I meet them that have gone before into Eean- hola. When the hour cometh I can stand before them without shame, for I have spoken/ He swept his robe about him, and glanc- ing at Hanun with a smile of unutterable disdain, made a step towards the doorway. * Stay I * said Feltor. ' I have yet a word for thee. What of David ? * Wenegog paused, turned his head, and smiled upon the king. Then he moved on again, but Boedweg's heavy hand arrested him. * What know I of David ? * he asked. * David is slain,' said Feltor ; ' and I demand a reckoning for his blood at thy hands.' ' Why at my hands ? * asked Wenegog, turning back upon the king. * Wert his enemy,* returned Feltor, * and hast command of thine own men I I will have thee reckon for his blood/ ONE TRAi^ELLER RETURNS 243 and wiU * Show me mine accuser,' said the Druid, looking haughtily about him. * Hanun,' said Feltor ; * tell what is known to thee, and no more.* * Hanun?' cried Wenegog mockingly. • The carrion crow bethinketh him that he will feed no more on the offal the eagle leaveth. Come not too nigh, though thou thinkest the eagle stricken. There is yet a grip in the talons.' * Have done with this,' Feltor exclaimed stormily * Speak, Hanun, I command thee.' *I am aweary,' said Wenegog. *I tell thee, Feltor, I know naught of David, and care naught. And if he be slain I grieve not nor rejoice.' A voice spoke beside him : * Lie not to the kinor.' He turned and faced Vreda. In his every encounter with her he had been confounded, and from the moment when he had first beheld her his power had begun to slip from his hands. He held now the last rag and rem- nant of it, but the very fact of her presence B 3 944 ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS inspired hi»'i to cling to i*. with a more des- perate tenuaty. *What can slie know?* he asked him- self. * All/ she answered him aloud. The word was an enigma to those who stood about them, but Wenegog staggered as though a hand had itruck him. * Thine innermost heart I * Hisj mind flashed to the sacred grove and the meeting with the hermit-priest of Bel. She set in words the picture that he saw. ' Night in the grove, and the loathly thing that tempteth thee. " Wilt have thy will ? " " Who will not when he may ? Thou knowest the man ? " " Ay I David the Blasphemer. Speak the word." " The word is spoken." * Even to the listeners the accusation was clear, and when Vreda ceased to speak a pro- digious weight of silence seemed to fall. To Wenegog the voice was a living echo to his thought, and to be thus translated unloosed his joints with fear. That the tale she hinted should be merely true was nothing. He could have faced it with a lie. But that she should touch his very fancy and speak the words ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS 345 that rang in his own brain chilled his blood, and unhinged his wits with horror. * What can a lie avail ? ' she asked. The next scene darted into the light cast by the circle of his thoughts, and stood there, horri- bly defined. The voice of the ghastly crea- ture spoke, and his own voice answered k. The living voice still tracked the inward tones, and still translated them. * The grove, and the loathly thing again. "None escape from it, and I struck deep." " None escape from it ? " * * The body will betray me,' thought Wene- gog- ' Yea,' she answered. * His body will be- tray thee, though thou saidest he would tell no tales.' Wenegog fell upon his knees with a cry. His veined hands writhed in the air. ' Mother of the gods ! Most holy There protect me. It is thy daughter.' * Nay,' she said. 'I am no daughter of There.' *I am slain already,' he thought. *To what tortures will Feltor set me ? My powers K ■■I WM- Wk iv m 1 mi i ; .ii^;. S|/f ;:;M. ■,■>;: 946 OAE TRAVELLER RETURNS are broken, and I am a mockery to them that served me.* * Perchance it may yet be well for thee that thou should'st become a mockery,' she answered, for his thoughts were like spoken words to her. * Yet Feltor will set thee to no tortures.* With such an abject surrender of all hope and courage as men know in dreams he rose and fled from her with groping hands and staggering feet. No man dared to arrest him. There was that in his face which would have made a passage through an army. Yet when those who remained behind were free of the horror of his eyes the silence gave way to tumult, and half the crowd would have poured headlong after him but for Vreda's restraining hand. She did but raise it and the tumult sank again. * Are not his thoughts his chastisement ? ' Her voice calmed all anger and revenge. * Let him go.' A sense of triumph swelled in Hanun's heart. His repentance for the past was a part of him, and he knew that it must be so until ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS ^7 the day when he should die, but it had grown into a power which drove him forward. Fired by faith and scourged by memory as he was, and changed in heart, he kept his old powers, his keenness of perception, his adroitness, and his promptitude. He saw that now was the hour in which to strike a final and a fatal blow at that pitiless creed which he had him- self no long uphold. * Let no man seek for vengeance,* he cried aloud. ' Let there be no more blood-shedding nor torture. But one thing would I pray of the king to do, in memory of his own mercy. Let the figure of Bel threaten the land no more. Let it be given to these hands, which have been swift to shed the blood of the inno- cent, to pull down the terror that casteth its cold shadow on the hearts cf men.* ' Be it so,* Feltor answered. * Burn it with fire, and let a plough be passed over the place whereon it standeth.' He turned to Vreda and knelt before her. ' Since thy coming there hath been gladness where sorrow went before. Thy voice hath brought joy, and thy presence is a healing of strife. Whence thou comest '-^ hs ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS I know not, but I know that whither thou leadest no harm can come to any. Thy faith shall be my faith. I will praise the one God and none other, and they who love their king will follow me. Speak, and that which thou commandest we will do.' *Do as thou hast said, Feltor,* she an- swered him. * Tear down the figure of Bel and the stones about it, that it may be a sign to all men that the days of blood are over.' Feltor sprang to his feet and cried with a loud voice : • Follow me I • •1, !,-l As the evening shadows gathered the fire glowed under the huge misshapen wicker figure, and the flames leapt in and out among the twisted withes. For the first time since the mock-human thing had burned no cry of victims mingled with the crackling noise of the fire. The inner circle swarmed with men, women, and children, and at the foot of every stone men with implements of every kind, chosen at random, slaved to destroy and level the symbols of their former faith. They li '* ti*iti ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS •#9 were more zealous in the flush of the new faith than ever they had been for the old. There needed but one voice of authority to be raised and all were ready in defiance of the creed which had slain and tortured time out of mind. The fire flamed out and the dreadful sym- bol sank in ashes, but the fire of fervour burned all night and for many a day and night thereafter. Stone after stone was levelled, and many were broken. Those of the centre circle were dislodged and set up in a heap over the ploughed circle of fire, and in their midst, on the thirty-second day from the beginning of the work, a gigantic cross was raised. On that thirty-second day Hanun held solemn service ; and to the gathered thousands streaming homewards the final image of the night was that of the symbol of peace and pardon, seen afar against the sunset bright- ue ^f the sky. '$.j\ I'lii 250 ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS CHAPTER XVn. 1 1 * The evening sun was shining, and a soft fine rain was falling, and a rainbow rising from the green of the far-off hills sprang to the height of its arch and there broke on skyey blue and fleecy cloud. A solitary personage, habited in the British fashion, with the thong- tied loose skin leggings of the Caernabians, climbed an eminence, and from its summit looked about him over a broad and beautiful expanse of country. He shaded his eyes with a delicate hand, well trimmed and fine, and turned him about slowly, scanning the land- scape on every side. ' A goodly land,' he said half aloud, ' but no joy to be lost in it, and never a sign of a road. If yonder river should be navigable — a river must needs lead somewhere — and a raft is easily made.' ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS 251 ft fine I from to the skyey lonage, thong- ibians, ummit autiful s with e, and land- *but 1 of a ible — and a He spoke in Latin, and his whole aspect behed his attire ; his beard of but a month's growth curhng jet black and close about his mouth, cheeks, and chin, his large southern eyes, and the olive tint of his complexion. When he had stood awhile to look about him he moved towards the further base of the hill, forcing his way through dense undergrowth and many thickets of briars. The descent in places was precipitous, and he was more than once compelled to use as a staff the fhort spear he carried. Coming at length to the edge of the stream he looked down upon a rocky bed strewn with boulders and clear shining round pebbles, parti- coloured like an intricate mosaic. The bank on which he stood was high and sheer, but on the other side a grassy lawn, dotted with clumpy of willow, and ridged with beds of alder and osier, sloped to the stream. The fine rain had already ceased to fall, and the rainbow in the east had faded from the sky, but still planted a prismatic transparent buttress upon the hill from which it had seemed to spring. As he stood leaning over the edge of the ■Pf i ir 353 ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS I, ^^ • -1 ■4 i t'SRi '^ bank, clinging to the trunk of a young ash, and thrusting half his body out of thick bos- cage, he became aware of voices, and retired with scarce a rustle. The voices were softly bright, and beyond a doubt feminine. They came nearer, speaking in a language which he followed with difficulty, and for a mere instant he caught a glimpse of two girls of lofty stature and much freedom and grace of movement, who passed a break in one of the osier beds. Then he lost sight of them, and the voices became stationary. The listener could catch here and there the meaning of a phrase of their speech, which differed chiefly in accent from that dialect of the Caeniabians with which he was familiar. By-and-bye they emerged from their shelter with shrill laugh- ters, and he, peering out again from his hiding-pkce, saw them enter the stream at a still deep reach below the boulders. For a minute or more they beat the water against each other with their hands, with voluble chatter and shriekings, and then one plunging into the middle of the stream the other fol- lowed, and they glanced hither and thither •%\ ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS 253 like a brace of nereids. From the foot to the knee, and from the shoulder to the finger-tip these water maidens were nut-brown with the free play of sun and wind, but their supple bodies flashed white and rosy under the wave. As they swam about the still pool their reddish-yellow hair trailed loose behind, swaying into wreaths as they turned, and no sculptor ever caught and perpetuated poses of more natural grace than they displayed at every motion and at every instant of transi- tion. The onlooker drew cautiously nearer to the edge, and surrendered his hold upon the slim trunk which had hitherto supported him. He was unaware of the treacherous nature of the ground he stood on, and before he had even time to be surprised he had fallen into a deep well-like pool in company with a cubic yard of earth or thereabouts. The maidens, startled by the splash, lookecl for its cauye, and by~and-bye saw a pair of striigglin':i !P''^i ',! ti ii! 11 At ,1 1> ate C>A^£ TRAVELLER RETURNS h with a sigh, *my fighting days are over, and I can do naught to stay thee. But if tiiou comest for peace art welcome.' * I come in peace,' Varonius replied. The call sounded nearer, and he answered it yet once more. 14) 1 H w ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS 961 CHAPTEB XVni. Wenegog sat in the innermust chamber of his dweUing, his head bowed upon his hands, and his sandalled feet stirring idly in the pungent dust of the floor, where the o(Jorous southern- wood carpet, long neglected and unrenewed, had fallen into dryness and decay. The thoughts of his heart were nauseous to him, and by times it seemed that the things that had befallen him were too bitter to be true. The circle of the gods which had been from the beginning and should have stood for ever was broken and destroyed, his own child had forsaken him, men who had obeyed him from their infancy, without so much as daring to question, now mocked his authority and de- rided him. His soul protested in an impotent passion of incredulity, like some wild beast caged, who will not recognise the bars that hold him, and breaks himself a, .tately and slow at the beginning, but moving quicker as it proceeded, and rising at li"t to a wild and half- discord ant storm of soiiiid. It fell from tliis to a low wail of supplication and desire, and quavered down to silence. Then it rose again more passionate and clamorous than before, an ecstasy and transp(^rt of beseeching. The li<^ht was fadincr fast, and ere the strain closed the bard's face was liidden by the shadows. His hands fell abruptly in the midsl of an unfinished cadence, and he drooped forward, leaning upon his harp. The echo lingered on the trembling, mur- muring strings, and died by imperceptible degrees. ^ v^.iv 268 ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS 'What is it thou hast seen?' Wenegog asked when he could bear the weight of silence no longer. ' Nothing/ the bard answered him. * The gods are hidden in darkness.' * What voice hath spoken ? * ' None. The gods are dumb I * ' Strive again, son of Odan,' cried the druid, falling upon his knees. 'I commanded where I should have prayed. Strive again I kneel before thee who have knelt only to the gods.' Coermdalhu smote one chord, and again let fall his hands. ~ ' It is dark,' he said. * It is dark.' Wenegog knelt in an extremity of an- guish, and only an accidental touch of the old man's fingers on the strings broke the silence. 'Farewell, Coermdalhu,* he said after a pause. ' We were friends ere the voice of Hest severed us.' Stoic as he was, his own vast self-pity broke him down, and his voice trembled. The bard gave him no answer, and he , ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS 269 moved away. The forest path lay in dark- ness, but be paced it mechanically as though he were familiar with every turn and winding. The murmur of water and the dim gleam of the twilight sky reached him together, and he sat down upon a rocky ledge above the river, and grew deaf and blind and empty, not caring for anything or thinking of any- thing, or being sorry or afraid or weary, but falling into that momentary death in life which lies in the lowermost gulf of despair. How long he sat thus he knew not, but he awoke after a time to the sense of light and sound. The moon had risen, and the stream glittered in its light. There were voices near him, and when his wits took cognisance of them he knew that they had been speaking there for some time. It was a certain sharp- ness and dryness of reproof in one of them which startled him awake. The other voice answered with an accent of remonstrance. ' 'Twas at thint^ asking, great Prefect. Thou art known already for a Roman, and ii ' thou wert but known for Yaroniiib thy lift' were not worth a drachma.' ■ JPI J, I lip m-ut for 3 of it. igh he vincial and by Deen in voice, traced ;e, my Dn this le after might then if blind r over- dike of 18,* the ay way if we better e have 3 tailor of the two — looked not unkindly at me. She would be an attraction behind the lattice at the Prefectorium.' Here they moved away, and after a pause Wenegog stealthily followed until he heard the low challenge of a sentinel and the mur- mured answer Varonius gave. He could see the bivouacked group at a little distance, indistinct in the moonlight. He saw the answer to all , his prayers, the fulfilment of his longinors. He had but to slay this Varonius here on Coerlean groutid to bring the whole power of Eome in ven- geance on the land. The gods had answered him. The chastisement of the blasphemers was secure, and the people would return to their primitive faith, scourged and humbled. This idea once conceived seized his whole soul. He prowled through the undergrowth, and took note of the three sentries who guarded the bivouac north, east, and west. The little encampment was backed by the river, and the south side was already safe and needed no watching. He knew how hopeless it would be to 272 ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS attack the encampment with the wild and untrained forces at his disposal. Whatever fanaticism could do his men were equal to, but he dreaded the Eoman discipline and the Roman arms. Keen as he was he would ask for odds of three to one. He thought of Roedweg and a picked dozen of his band, and with them would have ventured anywhere ; but Roedweg was his enemy, and twenty miles away. Suddenly he bethought him of the ad- miration Varonius had expressed for the granddaughters of Coermdalhu. He would u^e the girls to decoy the Roman to his destruction. Stealth and cunning should fill the place of force. He walked back to the stone hut by tht hillside, and found the blind bard still sitting there with his hands resting upon the harp and his head bowed upon his arms. ' Knowest thou whom thou hast here ? ' he demanded. ' Varonius, chief of the Ro- mans in Caerlheon ! ' ' What is that to me ? ' asked the old man. i,. ;,•■ ■ ' •"■■■ ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS 273 d and atever lal to, nd the Id ask irht of id, and ivhere ; twenty he ad- 3r the would to his uld fill by the sittin<»' e harp here ? * he Ro- he old * I have heard him in speech with another,' said Wenegog. * They are spying out the land for a new inroad.' 'They will fail as they have failed before,' replied Coermdalhu. The intelligence Wene- gog brought left him unmoved, but at the next speech of the Druid's he arose, alert and alive from head to foot. ' Why wait they here ? They spake of Temb and Aelfa.' * Spake of Temb and Aelfa? In what wise ? ' 'They spake of them as behind the lattice at the Prefectorium at Caerlheon.' ' Said I that my fighting days were over ? ' cried the old bard. ' I will slay him with my hands. The daughters of Odan play the wanton with this outer heathen ? ' ' Stay,' said Wenegog. ' Let the daughters of Odan lead the man who would defile them to his doom. A score of my men .lAait hard by. Let the girls entice the Eoman, and wherever they may lead him one of my men shall be ready.' The old man for sole answer struck a T r 374 ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS chord upon the harp, and one of the girla ran from the inner chamber of the hut. An hour later Wenegog's men were posted in the wood, and every score yards in a semi- circle about the threatened bivouac there was a furtive flash of arras. A noise of the measured beating of tri- angles tinkled on the midnight air. Varo- nius lifted his head from its heathy pillow and listened. Two voices twined together, receded, touched, soared high, soared low. Helba, sleeping lightly by his captain's side, awoke at the sound and turned. The two kept silence for a time, and then at a pause in the hymn Helba spoke. * Tljey make good music in their invoca- tion.' * Whom is it they invoke ? ' asked Varo- nius in a laughing whisper. ' Thee and me ? These are my water-nymphs of this afternoon. I tell thee, Helba, thou shalt not see such limbs betwixt Deva and Dorovernium.* He arose and looked in the direction from which the sounds proceeded. ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS «7$ *Look, Helba,* he whispered. *What are thy dancing stalls in Deva now ? * At but a little distance in the clear broad moonlight the two girls danced on the green- sward to the music of their triangles and their singing. They swayed to and fro with a sliding and sinuous grace. * This,' said Varonius, ' is too plain an invitation to be disregarded. Stay thou here, Helba. In a while I will have news for thee.' Helba would have restrained him, but Varonius turned away with a good-humdur- edly imperious gesture. As he arose fairly to his feet the girls saw him. He advanced, and they receded, but so slowly that he came near to them. They fluttered to the edge of the wood, and then darted into the darkness. He saw the white robes flickering in the moonlight which fell in glimpses through the thick- set foliage, and followed on. The robes waved before him, guiding him, and when he was a bow shot within the wood, a huge axe swung down swift and sure, and clove him to the breast bone. > , 1 1 IMAGE EVALUATION TEST TARGET (MT-3) ^ A^^ %> m^.. 1.0 I.I 1.25 "■ 'i^ 111 i|« 12.0 U II 1.6 Photographic Sciences Corporation 23 WEST MAIN STREET WEBSTER, N.Y. 14580 (716) 872-4503 z o^ ^ 76 ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS The man who had struck the blow raised a savage yell which was answered from a score of throats, and echoed far and wide over rock and stream and forest. Helba sprang anew to his feet, and a voice cried hoarsely in his own tongue : 'You wait Varohius? Seek him here, o^o home, and tell how free Coerlea meets the Roman gpy.* The wild cries rose again and again, and t hen dead (.Hence fell. ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS VJl CHAPTER XIX. In the rear of the palace was a pleasaunce which owed but little of its charm to art. Paths had been cut here and there through the undergrowth, and in part the place was overrun with a wild vine, degenerated from shoots which had been brought from Narbon- nese Gaul, and vainly planted for the cultiva- tion of the grape. Where this growth ceased, at the edge of a turfy space, it rose in a wall of flaming colour, fine golds and scarlets and russet reds, for the year had now come to the time when the alchemy of nightly frost and daily heat had well begun its miracle of change. Here below this wall of jewelled mass and golden tracery Feltor gave Wankard a lesson in the art of war. Heurtan, armed with a ,i'j il :;i m,' m it m m e a7> ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS t4.« m i t K-* 1 light cudgel, stood up before the boy, and warded the puny blows dealt at him. The child struck left-handed, and the king with a long ghttering blade in his hand showed him how to strike and recover. Wankard worked with his whole heart, and the little face and large dark eyes flushed and flashed with the excitement of the mimic contest, till Heurtan, watching his royal master rather than his own ward, received a blow upon his naked knee. Wankard threw down his stick and ran to his protector, crying out to know if he had hurt him, with an instant soUcitude. * Nay,' said the dwarf, fondling him. * And what if thou hadst? Must learn, and wilt have a bufiet or two thyself ere thou art master.' ' Must learn to give and take,' said the king laughingly. * Strike hard, lad, and strike not the cudgel only.' Barxclhold stood by, looking on with a sadness which had of late grown usual with her. Her face was pale, and had lost both its sprightliness and its unwomanliness. Feltor approached her and laid a hand upon her ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS vn shoulder whilst he watched the renewed exer- cise of the child and his companion. ^'Twould have grieved me but a while ago/ he said, *that the lad should be thus pitiful and gentle of heart. He hath courage and hardihood enough, and them he hath from me, but this pitifulness of heart, it cometh ' He stopped short, feeling Barzelhold move beneath his hand, and turned to meet her eyes. They looked at one another, and the thought of the murdered Vreda was in the mind of each. The shadow of that memory came between them often, and pushed them apart in a common horror of it, or drew them together in a common repentance of it. But they knew by now that there was no forget- ting it whilst life should last, and the new faith shed an awful light upon their guilt. They exchanged but one glance, which meant many things, and then Feltor, with the fihining blade trailing on the grass, moved away, and hid himself with his own thoughts f.n his chamber. Barxelhold remained behind, and the boy's sport with Heurtan, now that 980 ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS 1^ it had lost the stimulus of his father's presence, grew slack and ceased to intetest him. Barxelhold, with knitted hands and sor- rowful eyes bent downwards, walked to and fro. Suddenly Vreda appeared, emerging from a little alley in the brushwood, and Wankard with a cry of pleasure ran dancing forward to meet her. All the bounteous natural affection of the child's heart welled out to her, and he displayed his love witliout restraint. Since the beginning of her conver- sion Barxelhold had made many overtures to him, moved by conscience to make some re- paration for the rich stores of maternal love of which her crime had robbed him; but whether the compunction for her deed showed through her tenderness, or some fear of him as Yreda's child laid a chill upon her when she fain would have been kindest, she had never found her way to his childish heart. She had some womanly jealousy of Vreda's influence over him, and knowing her only as Kalyris, had begun to hold her own claim ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS •8i Stronger than over the child's love as Vreda's. Vreda spoke, and Barxelhold would not answer, but walked up and down the grassy space in great torture of spirit. And looking unwillingly upon Wankard's endearments and unwillingly listening to his glad prattle, she felt more wounded in her own loneliness of heart than she could have fancied. And her pains of conscience, and , the burnings of a desire, unsatisfied, denied, and loathed, lying within her like a solid core of fire, this lesser pain fell upon it as a handful of dry twigs and flamed with an exquisite torment, so that she could not restrain herself, but burst into a sudden rain of tears, and a storm of sobs so violent that they set her shaking from head to foot. * Go, good Heurtan,* said Vreda, * take the child away.' Heurtan obeyed with some back- ward glances of curious astonishment. Barxel- hold had fallen upon her knees, and the tears dripped fast through her fingers. Vreda knelt beside her, and setting her arms about her drew the weeping woman softly to her S83 ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS breast. But Barxelhold repulsed her passion- ately. *No, no I* she cried. 'Go I I — ^I hate thee I * 'Wherefore should'st hate me?* Vreda asked. * I have done thee no wrong, poor heart I And* there is naught but love in my mind. Thou hatest me not, and shalt not hate me, poor sufiering soul. Tell me thy griefs.' Then Barxelhold clung to her as passion- ately as she had repulsed her, and kissed her hands with broken words. *Thou art the kindest — but I — how un- worthy I Touch me not. I am not fit for thy handling. Nor thy faith. Let me go back. 'Whither would'st go?* the sweet voice asked her with so infinite a compassion that it wounded even whilst it healed. *To the evil faith of my father. Nay, nay I I would not. I am vile altogether. Pity me. Leave me not, or I am lost. I dare not look at mine own heart* * Look, poor child I ' Vreda answered her. ' Lay it bare before Heaven/ thy her. ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS jftj ' I will tell thee aU/ said Barxelhold, fawn- ing upon her in an extremity pf love and fear. «A11I all I' She arose, and wringing the tears from her eyes, ran, still shaking with her sobs, from side to side of the grassy space, peering into every avenue which entered- upon it. •We are alone,* said Vreda. *Wilt teU thy tale only to Heaven and me ? ' ^ Barxelhold fell again upon her knees and ftd her face in Yreda's robe. The reclothed soul knelt beside her, with hands of pitying pardon on her head. *It was ere thou camest to Coerlea,* Barxelhold began, murmuring in a voice scarce audible. Then sh;^ looked up wildly with clasped hands and streaming eyes. ' Wilt not betray me ? Tis years ago, yet the people 80 loved her they would slay me even now if they did but know.* • Fear me not,' said Vreda. ♦ How should I fear ? Who is there like unto thee for goodness ? Oh, my heart, my heart I Wilt hate me, Kalyris, when I have told thee I ' 284 ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS m ii'-'f * Nay,* Vreda answered. ' I shall not hate thee.' *y 'Canst do naught else when I have told thee. Yet I cannot live with my breast so burthened with this lire. 'Twas ere thou earnest to Coer- lea, when Vreda was queen in the land. Thou hast heard many speak of her ? ' * Many.' ' She was well-nigh like to thee for good- ness, and for beauty. When I first saw thee I thought of her. 'Twas like a knife at niy heart. At first she knew not Feltor, and he and I loved one another, and were betrothed in secret, none knowing of it. The Eomans made war upon Coerlea, and Feltor went forth to the wars.. He was then but chief of hi? tribe, but Saelmendeg was slain in battle, and Feltor connnanded in his stead. And after a great fight the Romans were driven from the borders of the land, and Feltor came back triumphing and was brought be- fore the queen. And Vreda, seeing that he was skilful in war beyond his years and of goodly stature, loved him, and bade him be her husband, and share her throne. Then ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS ««5 Peltor seeing "power thus ofTered to him for- got me, atid wedded the queen. And I know- ing this to be, lay awake of nights weeping and plotting ways to put poison into her meat or wine, that T might have Feltor back again. But Ifbund no way, and they were wedded, and I hated the queen. And in .awhile Feltor wearied of her, for she was cold, and not merry or warm-blooded, and would not sit at feast, or take pleasure! in the sacrifices to the gods. Then came David, and turned her from the old faith, and because the people so loved her many would have changed with her, and my father began to hate her.' All this was broken with weepings, and with the sting of the old loss, and momentary flashes 6f the old hate, and new outbursts of tears because of it. *• Yea, and I fear me that I hate her still sometimes that she took Feltor away from me, and it is thuS that I cannot rightly repent me of the thing we did. And yet if I repent not rightly how shall I hope to be forgiven ? I would hav^e' loved her had she not stolen Felt®r. But in a while he came back to me, 386 ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS and I knew again that he loved me, and that he was weary of Vreda. Yet Vreda was ever ^, kind to me, and loved me dearly, and was full of favours, and I hated her more and more, and when it was first spoken of between us that we should kill her I rejoiced, knowing that Feltcrvj would be my husband when she was gone.* Now that she came so near to her confes- sion the shame and horror of it overwhelmed her and she could not speak. She dared to look up, and saw that the face of Vreda was like the face of an angel, filled with pity and love and a most tender and holy joy. And at the beauty of it and the pity of it she was like to swoon with the pain of her repentance. * And ye slew her ? ' said Vreda. The only answer was a new burst of weep- ing, and a closer clinging of the wild be- seeching hands. * And if thou could'st call her back again and blot out this thing that thou hast done, would*st give Feltor back to her ? * At this test of soul and body Barxelhold writhed with a jealous anguish, but her re- morse and penitence bore her through. ONM TRAVELLER RETURNS ^? *Tea, would 1 1 Yet naught can undo it. Tie done, done, done for ever V * Now do 1/ said Vreda, * in the name of God and in the name of the Chhdt, His Son, bid thee go in peace and sin no more.* Then there was a long silence, and Baniel- hold's sobs sank lower and lower until they ceased, and only now and again one would shake her. When they had died to thi^, she arose, and kissed Yreda's hands with extreme humility, and Vreda drew her to her bosoia and kissed her upon the forehead. So they pax ted, Barxelhold veiling her face with her robe, and stealing to the quiet of her own chamber. She knelt, unconscious of the passage of time, by the side of the couch on which Vreda had lain in her last hour. The entrance of Faitor stirred her from her prayers and tears. She turned, and seeing that he bore a lamp in his hand she knew that it was night time. He set the lamp in a recess of the wall, and looking upon her with a mournful tender- ness, unloosed the clasp of his girdle with both hands. She stood before him with red eyes 388 ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS '% and pale face, unlike herself, quiet and re- solved. *Thou and I will lie side by side no more, Feltor. Go to thine own chamber. 'Twas for our own lusts we slew her, and we may not keep the prize of our blood-guiltiness.* He reached out his hands towards her, but she did not move. 'Farewell,* he said with a broken voice. 'Farewell.' She gave him the hands his imploring gesture asked for. He embraced her and kissed her upon the forehead, as Yreda had kissed her, and went his way. ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS *•? CHAPTER XX. Vreda began to know that her mission came neiar to its accomplishment, for the whole land was turned, and Wenegog and his rem- nant had betaken themselves to mountain fastnesses, shaking the dust off their feet against the Christians. Hanun worked among the people with an energy equal to David's own, exhorting, teaching, visiting the sick, and translating to the Coerlean tongue the sacred memories which the old saint had left behind him. Vreda wrought beside him in so warm a contentment that the pains and weights of the flesh were almost as nothing to her, but it was borne more and more upon her that the end of her sojourn was drawing nigh. It came to pass one day that she had been upon an errand of goodn.3ss to the widow of 390 ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS m a woodsman who dwelt in a hut upon the side of that headland where the cairn had been built to the memory of the queen ; and although she was an hour's journey from the cairn, and greatly weary, she had a desire to see it, and so walked thither, and looked upon the jewels with which her body bad been decked at her funeral. They lay there un<^ disturbed, for an awe still lived about the spot, and except for herself and David, none had ventured so much as to look upon what had been her resting-place. Here were the marks of that boundary which she had passed and repassed, and must pass yet again ere long. And in looking upon them she felt alone, and in her mind familiar faces grew far-off and strange. She had no fellow in the world, and a longing swept through her like the rushing of a wind to proclaim the secret of her history. From the time of her coming back she had been Uke one who sits heavily fettered in a narrow prison-house, walled from free au: and all in- timacies of affection, with only her own thoughts for her companions. And now, re- / mt ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS «9« / membering aQ she had resigned, she felt her body weigh upon her like a mountain, and would willingly have been liberated from it l^ any rending of the flesh. Recalling the unutterable pmigs of death, she yearned for them. ^ But when this had endured for a time, and she had fallen to a dull Anguish of the mind against which she had no power to struggle, she found that she was looking on the sea, which slumbered in an autumn mist of dusk below. It lay, reaching beyond her knowledge or the knowledge of any — vast, limitless, asleep, and the murmur of its slum- bers broke upon her ear with a strange voice of peace. Then looking at her feet she beheld a little pool in the hollow of a stone, and the wind fretted it. ' Frettest thyself,' she said, * and the great deep lyeth still I ' > Then suddenly her pi Ins were as less than nothing, and the ills of life were nothing, and the solid earth whereon she stood was no more than a grain of dust, and the time of her suffering less than the fretful cup of water • IT 8 M. ^9^ ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS W^ at her feet, and the glory that Gibould be was wider and deeper than that unbounded deep. Being thus re-comforted she knew that she had not been brought here in vain, and returning to the hut of the woodsman she watchM by the sick woman until nightfall. Then desiring again to be alone with her own soul she went out into the darkness ; and, behold! from hill to hill before her beacon fires were darning, and even as she looked they flashed up left and right, burning on the crown of every eminence like red stars of war. ( ij She knew that these fires portended war, and could mean naught else,, yet how war should have befallen in a day she could not guess. EvexL aa she looked, a new beaoon blaze sprang up near at hand, and she could see the figures of the men who moved, about it. She hastened to them, and asking of one who came racing towards her what waa the reason of the fires, received i for sole answer a panting breath — 'The Eomans' — as he shot past her. She knew that the Bomana could come only from Deva, and there was but one y I ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS j,*<- ?93 road their army coul'^. take to reach the for^s of the Coerlwid. Thither she bent her steps. r^ In the grey light of dawn she stood with Barxelhold, Feltor, and Iloedweg upon a broad craggy platform overlooking tlie pass in which the Coerjean troops were rapidly assembling. Feltor and Roedweg consulted on the dispo- sition of the battle. A band of active young chieftains waited at a little distance to receive and carry orders. The valley was black with the massed warriors, and towards the central lake of men poured tributary streams from e^ch hillside, marching with wild shoutings to the dissonant sound of horns. Beyond the mouth of the pass groups of skin-clad horse- men .scoured the plain in all directions. The sun had already risen, but the valley was still sombre with the shadow of the hills. Sud- denly, far and far away, there was a flashing of thousand* of tiny gleams of light. The diamond glitter twinkled in the valley, and op the crest of the hill beyond, and played in a swift interchange with shadow in the black- i][ess of th^ pinie wood. Feltor stretched out m ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS Ua a hand towards the distant brightness and turned to Boedweg. * Hither they come I ' * Ay/ said Boedweg stolidly, * hither they come. Good fighting-stuff. They scrape the hair from their faces and polish their cheeks with stone to look womanly, but they fight like men.' There was a huge satisfaction in Eoedweg's mind, for he had feared lest the new faith should be the. death of fighting, and he felt more kindly than common to the Bomans. The distant glitter grew nearer and nearer, and the Botnan cavalry deployed from the pine wood and came upon the plain, a com- pact mass of shining steel. The mounted Coerlean scouts went circling before them, now and then making audacious rushes at the advancing column, but always wheeling and retiring ere they came to harm. 'Boedweg,* said the king, *no man cian Bay who may come out of this. If I fall thou shalt have charge of all things under Barxel- hold. And having always found thee good man and true, I know thou wilt be still good m '■)■ ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS >9S can LOU [el- man and true, for at thy years the nature of a man changeth not because he cometh to power. Guard my child, I pray thee, that when he is of an age to rule he may do justice and be merciful. Be thy strength a prop to the queen's weakness. And now ere the fight begin we will go down, and I will speak my mind before the chieftains, that there may be no doubt hereafter as to the things I desired before my death.* Now the Eoman infantry emerged from the pine wood, and deployed across the plain in echelons of cohorts, in striking contrast, as even Feltor and Eoedweg could feel, to the turbulent mob of the Coerleans. Seen from a distance the open order they took detracted nothing from the massive aspect of their forces, whilst it added greatly to their appa- rent numbers. The cavalry drew up on the right of the evident line of battle, facing the front of the pass, ready to stay pursuit or tossist in attack as the fortune of the day might determine. The men sat hke a regi- ment of statues, in stoHd indifference to the wheelin^p and shoutings of the wild Coerlean 3^. ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS borfiemeQ, who buzzed about them like a cloud of hornets. V . As the enemy drew nearer Feltor and his chieftains became aware that they would have not only to encounter the Eomans, but legions of Lennians and Caernabians, the former dis- tinguishable by a metal cap- shaped helmet worn with an otherwise British dress, and the latter by their shields of red ox-hide. The Roman slingers and archers were thrown out in clouds, and were at once encountered by Coerleans of the same arms, who had lain concealed behind every rock and bush and inequality of the ground. * The fight begins,' said Feltor. He called for his hcrse, and bade Roedweg accompany him. Then before he mounted he spoke to Barxelhold, gravely and calmly. At his call a page took him by the foot and helped him to the bare back of his steed. Eoedweg mounted also, and they galloped down the hillside together. Behind a craggy and almost inaccessible natural breastwork, higher than the rocky shelf on which Yreda and Barxelhold rested, ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS W a Bky and a little to its r^Ar, crouched Wenegog with his remnant of the priesthood. Ha had full sight of the field of battle, and awaited with an actual greed of impatience the victory of the Boman arms. No matter what missile were employed, it was the hand of the gods that hurled the punishment in answer to their servant's works and prayers. His followers waited in another mood, not knowing the secret of his mind. They h^d not understood his cry in Latin on the night of the murder of Varonius, and were too little subtile in their thoughts to plot the punishment of one enemy by the hands of another. That the Eomans should set foot upon Coerlean soil was to them as hateful a conception as that their own people should desert the gods. They waited for the moment when Wenegog should lead them against the common enemy, and did not dream that he would exert his authority to restrain them. Wenegog, spying between the boulders, saw the more disciplined advance of the Boman skirmishers drive the Coerlean sUngers^ archers, and horsemen to the hills, and tasted •91 ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS the forethoughts of victory. He saw the first cohort of auxiliaries, fluiked by skirmishers, roll up to the black dense line of the defen- ders, and heard the\ noise of the shoutings, and saw the flashing of arms, and the waver- ing of the front, and the dead and wounded laid in swathes. Then for one mad minute, and no more, the red ox-hide shields and the shining caps were all mingled and broken up with the black and grey head-dresses and the white limbs and flashing weapons of the Coerleans, and the advance fell back in wild confusion, only to be stayed by the march of the stern cohort in the rear. The eagle gleamed on high, and the line before it and the lines behind moved forward slowly and relentlessly — pursuers and pur- sued recoiling before it in a mutual slaughter, but the Lennians and Caernabians were panic- stricken, and — walled between the advance of their support and the masses of the enemy — ^were cut to pieces, save for the few who passed through the seemingly unbreakable open formation which Eoman discipUne pro- vided for the easier escape of a defeased first ONE TRAVBLLER RETURNS 399 advance. Wenegog ground his teeth at this, but the Boman mettle had yet to be tried, and the time was here. The lines were face to face, and from the distance at which he watched they seemed to touch, . when the great javelins shone and flew '^s if one hand had thrown them all. Then with a ringing crash the two lines met, and the Coerleans yelling and fighting hard dropped back, foot by foot. Then they stood, and the scales of the battle hung in the balance, and drooped slowly to the other side, and the Romans went back foot by foot, till in a while the contend- ing forces climbed a wall of dead to reach each other, and fought at the top of it. Whilst he watched all this a hand was laid upon his arm and one of his men pointntracted and grew wider, and its head had just peered over the rock on which the queen and her party stayed when it was beheld by one of her guard, who instantly raised a shout which drew all eyes from the raging ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS 301 battle 4own below and strung all hearts to immediate combat here. The first line of the Boman soldiery fell, and one or two of the bodies were thrown clean from the edge, striking upon projections of the rock and leaping from point to point until they dropped into the brushwood half-way down and there were hidden. But the next line pushed up after them, and another made a detour of the rock, and '^t another swarmed down from the top 01 u until the platform was alive with men. The struggling throng was so thickly crushed together that there was no space for the swing of the battle-axe or the long Coer- lean swoid, and the deadly Roman glaive did its work with awful swiftness. Even till now the Druids had burned for their leader's word, and not hearing it, rose to their feet at the first cry of wrath and hate that sounded amongst them. They dashed headlong down the hillside axe in hand, and fell upon the invader with such a shock that the steel-clad line wavered and broke before it. It closed again at the calm cry of the centurion, and when the first surprise was k, yn ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS I (Si W ?! l\ f. \ i :' over the fanatical courage of the priests had no chance against the skill and discipline of the soldiers. The Druids were cut down to a man, and Wenegog,\ standing on the edge of the parapet above, screaming commands and curses, was struck through the throat by an arrow, and leaping high fell sideways over the steepest face of the hill. Vreda and Barxelhold, already pinioned^ saw his fall. Feltor, flying upwards to their rescue followed by a cloud of horsemen, saw it also. From the very thickest of the fight he had seen the flank movement of the Bo- mans. It came from a point where he had believed his own forces to be fortified by nature, and he was mad to think that he had left his wife and Vreda in danger. The way was rough and difficult, and though he urged his horse with hand and foot and voice, and the beast strained his utmost powers in answer to the triple call, he feared that he would reach the place too late. He could not guess what the Eoman strength at this spot might be, but he would not have paused an instant if he had ridden single-handed to charge the ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS 3P3 \ whole of the invading power. An arrow struck his horse between Ihe eyes, and steed and rider hurtled to the ground together. As Feltor rose to his feet one of his own chiefs swerved lest he should trample upon him, and at that instant fell, struck by a stone from a shng. Feltor seized the horse, re- mounted, und rode on. He saw Barxelhold and Vreda hurried from the crag to the mountain torrent-bed by which the surprise had travelled, and with half-a-dozen of the young chieftains of his horsemen hard upon his heel's, tore upwards amid a shower of stones and arrows. Then he was in among them, raining great blows on every sider At each stroke a man went down, but his horse fell pierced by many wounds, and he himself, struck by a blow which sent the regal cir- clet ringing and spinning from his brows, lay silent and unconscious. ' The king ! * cried the officer who had dealt the blow. * Take him away. Send him to Deva with the women.' The helpless form was Ufted to the shoul- ders of three men and borne hastily away 504 ONE TR/ 'ELLER RETURNS 1^ under the escor of the same guard which had charge of Vreda and Barxelhold. Meantime the ba^ttle raged at the mouth of the pass, and was fought On either side with unstinted valour. Old Eoedweg, with white face blood-besmeared, and great shining eyes and teeth close set, fought with a grim joy no change of creed could alter. He had been wounded twice, and had twice been down upon the heaps of dead and dying, so that he was blood from head to foot, and his hands stuck to the haft of the axe he wielded. Even the staunch Eoman learned to dread him, and where he came, with the whirhng axe making lightnings about him, many a man shrank who had never yielded an inch in fight till then. He had cried his last battle- cry for that day, for he had gone dumb with hours of shouting, but he was none the less terrible for his sUence. The fight hung in doubt for a while, but the bone and sinew and weight of the savage tnountaineers and huntsmen at last beat down the Eoman arms and discipline. The eagle of the Legion of the Victorious was borne ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS 305 i h rearward, yet no man turned his back. But the tide of victory flowe/i eastward and h southward with scarce a check. Suddenly e young Elangor, Roedweg's son, wounded h and on a wounded horse, came galloping g from the crag where Feltor had been taken 11 prisoner. d 'Coerleans,' he shouted in a voice which n pierced the din of battle, * revenge your king L8 and queen.' There rose a yell in answer to this call. 1 1. d and the savage forces dashed forward with a rush so terrible that the stubborn defence g broke and scattered before it. For a mere % a h minute or two the plain beyond the pass was filled with the flying Eomans, but then the A 5- stern discipline and indomitable spirit which m h had made half the world their own spoke out ■1 I ss again. They formed anew, and faced pursuit with an aspect so resolute and steady that the It Coerlean leaders, warned by the experience ?e of earlier conflicts in the open, called their n bandogs off*, and dropped back surHly into • le their own fastnesses. • le And whilst the defeated legion marched X / i J ^t1 306 0A£ TRAVELLER RETURNS sullenly back, leaving one-third of their num- ber dead or dying on Coerlean soil, a chariot, guarded by a score of Eoman horsemen, bore Vreda, Barxelhold, and the wounded Feltor swifUj towards Deva. ONM TRAVELLER RETURNS 9^ CHAPTER XXL In the cool of a May evenmg a company of ladies and gentlemc^ of Rome strolled under the guidance of the chief gaoler through the arches of the Coliseum. They were all people of distinction, and their bearing was marked by a fine impertinence and indifierence. They were animated and voluble about trifles which touched themselves, and exquisitely languid and unconcerned with regard to the prisoners who were the next day to be given to the lions. They came to see because it was the mode, and because the spectacle was only open to distinguished people. It was a task ordained by fashion, and only a few were in- experienced and young enough to take an open pleasure in it. zS II 3oB ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS * These, Patrician/ said the gaoler, pausing before a grating, * ar^ the servants of the good Caius Marcius.' ' The assembled ladies and gentlemen be- came interested, and crowded somewhat one upon another to look at a sullen group of negroes huddled together behind the bars. * They burned him in his villa,' said one. * The action was meritorious,' said another, yawning behind his hand, *but the motive was mistaken. They burned him because he flogged them something too often. Now had they burned him for writing those execrable comedies their judgment in letters would have earned all good men's praises.* The interest in the negroes soon wore itself out, and the straggling procession passed on. * I am not one of the praisers of old days,' said the exquisite who had last spoken, * but I remember my respectable father telling how the most sweet-natured Emperor Domitian, of gentle memory, burned some two hundred at the stake and threw some two hundred to the beasts on the same day Now we have fallen »>o sixty-three for a day's sport.' ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS 309 •These, most noble Claudius,' said the gaoler, pausing at another arch, ' are Chris- tians/ ^' * Poor wretches I ' answered the noble Clau- dius. 'I used half to pity them, but their teaching has proved most mischievous.' Nobody seemed to be impressed by the Christians, and two or three yawned openly. ' These,' said the gaoler, again pausing, * are the assassins of the Prefect Varonius.* , Here once more the interest brightened, and the ladies, amongst whom Varonius had been a favourite, pressed forward almost with eagerness. 'What has our most sublime emperor decided ? ' asked Claudius. ' They are thrown to the beasts to-morrow, Magnificent,' replied the gaoler. The crowd pressed and stared and chatted and went by. Yreda turned to her companions with a look of heavenly happiness. * Here, at length,' she said, *is the end of all our sorrows. Barxelhold looked up with a pale and IM. Ru «lo \ aVir TRAVELLER RETURNS frightened smile, and creeping nearer to her laid hold of her hand\and fondled it. Vreda kissed her, still smiling with a calm ^nflicker- ing radiance. Feltor, with hlb wide shoulders leaning against the brickwork of the wall, looked down upon them with folded arms and dreamy eyes. ' I would I were sure of things at home,' he said at length. * Canst tell me how they go, Kalyris ? * * If aught is shown to me,' she answered, ' I will tell thee.' When they had rested in silence for a time, and the balmy darkness had fallen about them, one of the gaolers of the lower sort came with slaves, who bore loaves of bread and earthenware jars of water. The man thrust the torch he carried between the bars and looked at the prisoners. A slave entered the cage, laid down a jar and a loaf and retired without a word. The light and the voices died away. Vreda spoke. *Let us eat and drink together for the last on earth, dear companions. To-morrow ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS J" we shall eat of the fruit of the tree of God, and drink of the water of the river of Ufe/ So the bread was broken, and they ate together in silence. Every now and again they heard the howling^ of the beasts in the arches near at hand. *I would,' said Peltor, «that I had but one of the glaives these Romans carry. I would fain die like a man.' , ' Hast looked death's eyes down many a time, Feltor,' said Barxelhold in a trembling voice. ' For me, I am afeared, but I am but a woman. I am aweary, Ealyris, of the sins wherein I fall. I am aweary of these "bonds of flesh which hold me down, these snares of flesh that trip my feet. And by times my soul is strung out of its own weariness, and I cry out for death, and by times I tremble.* 'The body trembleth, feeling the doom that shall befall it ; but the soul is steadfast, seeing that which lies before. And save for thine own comfort I would not even bid thee be of courage. For there is nothing now to be 3ia ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS i counted between courage and dread, save that dread sufiereth\a thousand times, and courage but once/ * Many have I seen awaiting death,' said Peltor, 'but never one like thee.* 'Many have met death within these walls,* she answered, ' as happy and as calm as I am now, and many more will meet him here in euch a joyful surety as our own.' The sweet voice paused in the darkness, and went on again with a glad calm. * The Eoman will go no more to Coerlea, nor the heathen vex its borders. Odan and There and Bel are dead, and where the shadow of their terror lay dwells the peace of he Cross. I see Hanun and Wankard glad but for their grief for us. I see Eoedweg ruling justly to the fulness of his time. I see Wan- kard, a good king, ruling over a happy land. I see Hanun with his holy hope fulfilled. I see temples rising to the God of mercy and long-suffering everywhere, and the temples to the false gods of cruelty and oppression every- where crumbling to the dust. I see the little ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS vfi )W e lUt g in- d. I d o land that gave us birth grown chief among the kingdoms of the world, and over it the star of peace. The wild beasts howled. At early dawn two gaolers broke upon the peaceful sleep of Vreda and her companions. They entered the cage, and one of them un- locked the bar which secured the doors lead- ing to the open arena. Then each set his shoulder to a door and rolled it back. The tranquil morning light and the fresh morning air came like a double greeting, and the three awakened, looked out on the vast oval of the arena and the terraced rows of empty seats and the pale sky beyond, with one star shimmering in its depths. * They run smooth enough,* said one of the gaolers, and clanging the doors together again, and fastening them anew, they de- parted. The morning wore on and the light broad- ened until even where they sat they could see the flecks of sunshine on the corridor beyond their bars. Then the murmurs of a crowd were heard without, a multitudinous P4 ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS homy with a shriek or call, or burst of laughter strangely clear in the midst of it. The morning wore on still, and the mur- murs swelled and swelled. Then came a burst of martial music, hailed by thunders on thunders of applause. Then silence, and again the howling of the beasts. The gaolers came again, with guards in their train. They rolled the doors back cautiously, and the guards thrust the victims into the arena. The doors closed with a clang. Far off at the extreme limit of the arena the wild creatures prowled, and Barzel- hold threw herself with a cry at Vreda's feet. ' Have no fear,* said Vreda, * I have passed the gates of death before.' * Thou ? * • I am Vreda, whom ye slew/ The beasts came bounding across the sand. The vast white ring of facrs flashed and darkened, and heaven opened radiant. THE END. b of I ttur- B a I on and I in ftck Ims bhe :el- \ ed id