nds futilely for a moment, and
then with infinite difficulty propped himself up a little and looked up
at Robert.

"You have killed me," he gasped. Fear and wonder questioned in his dying
eyes, forced a question from his dying lips. "Who are you?" Even as he
asked, an awful look came over his face, he saw and knew. "The King!" he
cried, horribly. His hands slipped on the stones, his head struck the
floor, he was dead.

Robert dropped on his knees beside the dead man, and spoke softly.

"He hath uplifted the humble."

XVII

IN THE ARENA

The great amphitheatre which Roman craft had planned, which Roman hands
had fashioned, lived almost in its integrity in the days of King Robert
the Good. He had girdled it with gardens; he had sought to obliterate
the memories of its old-time brutalities, its old-time bloodshed, by the
institution of kindly sports and gentle pastimes. A populace had laughed
innocently, had contested healthily in the place where man had fought
with man, where man had fought with beast, where the soil had sucked
thirstily the red wine of life. But a good king does not last forever,
and a good king's ways are not always inherited, and Syracuse had been
fluttered by the rumor that King Robert the Bad intended to surpass the
pagans and to make the ancient amphitheatre again the scene of evil
deeds. And by way of consecration to its new-old use, a maiden was to
be burned by fire in its arena on a charge of sorcery against the
King--burned by fire, unless her appeal to the ordeal of battle could
find for her between sky and earth any champion doughty enough to
overthrow the King's man, the challenger, who stood for the King and
accused the girl of witchcraft. And this did not seem likely, for the
King was known to have chosen for his champion the strongest, the most
skilful swordsman in all Sicily, his dearest friend, his favorite
companion, the Lord Hildebrand.

Of the girl herself, whose life stood in such jeopardy, Syracuse knew
little. She was the daughter of Theron the executioner; she had lived on
the top of a mountain; she had been snared in a church. Certain citizens
of Syracuse had seen her in the church, a beautiful white child, with
flame-colored hair, who tugged at King Robert's bell and appealed for
pity. There was a queer fool, too, mixed up with the business, but he
seemed to have disappeared, and really nobody cared very much what had
happened to him. What everybody cared for ve