own no other lord. Do your work,
King. I am solitary among your myriads, but you cannot bend me."

"So be it," said Houlagou.

"I ask two boons as one about to die. Let me fall in battle against your
warriors. And let me spend the hours till sundown alone, for I would
prepare myself for my journey."

"So be it," said Houlagou, and turned to his hounds.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

The damoiseau of Beaumanoir sat on a ridge commanding for fifty miles
the snow-sprinkled uplands. The hum of the Tartars came faint from a
hollow to the west, but where he sat he was in quiet and alone.

He had forgotten the ache of loss which had preyed on him.... His youth
had not been squandered. The joy of young manhood which had been always
like a tune in his heart had risen to a nobler song. For now, as it
seemed to him, he stood beside his King, and had found a throne in the
desert. Alone among all Christian men he had carried the Cross to a
new world, and had been judged worthy to walk in the footprints of his
captain Christ. A great gladness and a great humility possessed him.

He had ridden beyond the ken of his own folk, and no tale of his end
would ever be told in that northern hall of his when the hearth-fire
flickered on the rafters. That seemed small loss, for they would know
that he had ridden the King's path, and that can have but the one
ending.... Most clear in his memory now were the grey towers by Canche,
where all day long the slow river made a singing among the reeds. He saw
Alix his wife, the sun on her hair, playing in the close with his little
Philip. Even now in the pleasant autumn weather that curly-pate would be
scrambling in the orchard for the ripe apples which his mother rolled to
him. He had thought himself born for a high destiny. Well, that destiny
had been accomplished. He would not die, but live in the son of his
body, and his sacrifice would be eternally a spirit moving in the hearts
of his seed. He saw the thing clear and sharp, as if in a magic glass.
There was a long road before the house of Beaumanoir, and on the extreme
horizon a great brightness.

Now he remembered that he had always known it, known it even when his
head had been busy with ardent hopes. He had loved life and had won life
everlasting. He had known it when he sought learning from wise books.
When he kept watch by his armour in the Abbey church of Corbie and
questioned wistfully the darkness, that was the answer he