who, beholding Beltane,
halted to peer at him with head out-thrust; quoth he:

"Ha! stand! Stand, I say and speak me who thou art?"

Then Beltane laughed softly; said he:

"O fool, not to know--I am death!" and with the word, he leapt. Came a
cry, muffled in a mighty hand, a grappling, fierce yet silent, and
Beda, cowering back, beheld Beltane swing a writhing body high in air
and hurl it far out over the battlements. Thereafter, above the soft
rustle of the night-wind, a sound far below--a faint splash, and Beda
the Jester, shivering in the soft-stirring night wind, shrank deeper
into the gloom and made a swift motion as though, for all his folly, he
had crossed himself.

Then came Beltane, the smile still twisting his mouth; quoth he:

"Forsooth, my strength is come back again; be there any more that I may
deal withal, good Fool?"

"Lord," whispered the shivering jester, "methinks I smell the dawn--
Come!"

So Beltane followed him from the battlements, down winding stairs,
through halls that whispered in the dark; down more stairs, down and
ever down 'twixt walls slimy to the touch, through a gloom heavy with
mildew and decay. On sped the jester, staying not to light the
lanthorn, nor once touching, nor once turning with helping hand to
guide Beltane stumbling after in the dark. Then at last, deep in the
clammy earth they reached a door, a small door whose rusted iron was
handed with mighty clamps of rusted iron. Here the jester paused to fit
key to lock, to strain and pant awhile ere bolts shrieked and turned,
and the door yawned open. Then, stooping, he struck flint and steel and
in a while had lit the lanthorn, and, looking upon Beltane with eyes
that stared in the pallor of his face, he pointed toward the yawning
tunnel.

"Messire," said he, "yonder lieth thy way to life and the world. As
thou did'st give me life so do I give thee thine. Thou wert, as I
remember thee, a very gentle, tender youth--to-night are three dead
without reason--"

"Reason, good Fool," said Beltane, "thou did'st see me borne in a
prisoner to Garthlaxton; now, tell me I pray, who was she that rode
with us?"

"'Twas the Duchess Helen of Mortain, messire; I saw her hair, moreover--"

But lo, even as the jester spake, Beltane turned, and striding down the
tunnel, was swallowed in the dark.

CHAPTER XXVII

HOW BELTANE TOOK TO THE WILD-WOOD

A faint glimmer growing ever brighter, a jagged patch of pale sky, a
cleft in t