he mighty with naked hands! Behold Beltane the Duke!
Is he not worthy to be our leader--shall we not follow him?" Then came
a roar of voices:

"Aye--let us follow--let us follow!"

"On, then!" cried Walkyn, his glittering axe aloft. "To Garthlaxton!"

Then from an hundred brawny throats a roar went up to heaven, a cry
that hissed through clenched teeth and rang from eager lips, wilder,
fiercer than before. And the cry was:--

"Garthlaxton!"

CHAPTER XXX

HOW THEY SMOTE GARTHLAXTON

It was in the cold, still hour 'twixt night and dawn that Beltane
halted his wild company upon the edge of the forest where ran a
water-brook gurgling softly in the dark; here did he set divers eager
fellows to fell a tree and thereafter to lop away branch and twig, and
so, bidding them wait, stole forward alone. Soon before him rose
Garthlaxton, frowning blacker than the night, a gloom of tower and
turret, of massy wall and battlement, its mighty keep rising stark and
grim against a faint light of stars. Now as he stood to scan with
purposeful eye donjon and bartizan, merlon and arrow-slit for gleam of
light, for glint of mail or pike-head, he grew aware of a sound hard
by, yet very faint and sweet, that came and went--a small and silvery
chime he could by no means account for. So crept he near and nearer,
quick-eyed and with ears on the stretch till he was stayed by the
broad, sluggish waters of the moat; and thus, he presently espied
something that moved in the gloom high above the great gateway,
something that stirred, pendulous, in the cold-breathing air of coming
dawn.

Now as he peered upward through the gloom, came the wind, colder,
stronger than before--a chill and ghostly wind that flapped the heavy
folds of his mantle, that sighed forlornly in the woods afar, and
softly smote the misty, jingling thing above--swayed it--swung it out
from the denser shadows of scowling battlement so that Beltane could
see at last, and seeing--started back faint and sick, his flesh a-creep,
his breath in check 'twixt pale and rigid lips. And beholding what
manner of thing this was, he fell upon his knees with head bowed low
yet spake no prayer, only his hands gripped fiercely upon his axe;
while to and fro in the dark above, that awful shape turned and swung--
its flaunting cock's-comb dreadfully awry, its motley stained and rent
--a wretched thing, twisted and torn, a thing of blasting horror.

And ever as it swung upon the air, it