"Why?" he asked. "He was only my father!"
Gilbert's hand relaxed and fell to his side, then he lifted it again
and laid it gently on Dunstan's shoulder.
"Poor Dunstan!" he said.
But Dunstan smiled bitterly and said nothing, for he thought himself
poor indeed, since if the dead man had given him a tenth of his due, he
should have had land enough for a knight.
"We cannot leave him here," said Gilbert, at last.
"Why not? There are dogs."
Dunstan took up his master's shield and without more waiting turned his
back on his father's body. But Gilbert stood where he was, and gazed
down into the face of the man who had done him so much harm; and he
remembered Faringdon and the swift stroke that had killed his father,
and Stortford woods, where he himself had lain for dead. He still saw
in dreams how Curboil snatched his dagger left-handed from its sheath,
and now, by strong association, he wished to see whether it were still
the same one, a masterpiece of Eastern art, and he stooped down in the
dawn to pull back the cloak and take the weapon. It was the same, fair
and keen, with the chiselled hilt. He stuck it into his own belt, for a
memory, for it had once been sheathed in his own side; then he drew the
cloak over the dead face and went his way, just as the hushed city
began to stir, following Dunstan to his lodging, musing on the strange
chances of his life, and glad that, since his enemy was to die, it had
not been his ill chance to soil the blade consecrated to the Cross with
blood so vile, and to slay with his own hand the father of the woman he
loved.
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