As Sir Arnold felt the rough steel wrenched from the flesh-
wound, he knew that the next stroke would kill him. Quick as light, his
left hand snatched the long dagger from its sheath at his left side,
and Gilbert, raising his blade to strike, felt as if an icicle had
pierced his breast; his arm trembled in the air, and lost its hold upon
the hilt; a scarlet veil descended before his eyes, and the bright
blood gushed from his mouth as he fell straight backward upon the green
turf.
Sir Arnold stepped back and stood looking at the fallen figure
curiously, drawing his lids down, as some short-sighted men do. Then,
as the sobbing breast ceased to heave and the white hands lay quite
still upon the sward, he shrugged his shoulders, and began to take care
of his own wound by twisting a leathern thong from Gilbert's saddle
very tight upon his upper arm, using a stout oak twig for a lever. Then
he plucked a handful of grass with his left hand and tried to hold his
dagger in his right in order to clean the reddened steel. But his right
hand was useless; so he knelt on one knee beside the body, and ran the
poniard two or three times through the skirt of Gilbert's dark tunic,
and returned it to its sheath. He picked up his sword, too, and
succeeded in sheathing it. He mounted his horse, leaving Gilbert's
tethered to the tree, cast one more glance at the motionless figure on
the grass, and rode away towards Stortford Castle.
CHAPTER IV
Two months after Sir Arnold de Curboil had left Gilbert Warde in the
forest, believing him to be dead, the ghostly figure of a tall, wafer-
thin youth, leaning on the shoulders of two grey brothers, was led out
into the warm shadows of the cloister in Sheering Abbey.
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