ise--arise--Pentavalon!" Came a rush of
feet, a shock, and thereafter a confused din that rose and fell and,
gradually ceasing, was lost in a sudden clamour of bells, fierce-pealing
in wild and joyous riot.

"Aha! 'tis done--'tis done!" panted Roger, stooping to cleanse his
blade, "spite of all our lack of method, Giles--'tis done! Hark ye to
those joy-bells! So doth fair Belsaye shout to all men she is free at
last and clean of Gui and all his roguish garrison--"

"Clean?" quoth Giles. "Clean, forsooth? Roger--O Roger man, I have
seen men die in many and diver ungentle ways ere now, but these men--
these men of Gui's, look--look yonder! O sweet heaven keep me ever from
the tearing hands of vengeful mothers and women wronged!" And turning
his back on the littered market square, Giles shivered and leaned him
upon his sword as one that is sick.

"Nay," said Black Roger, "Gui's black knaves being rent in pieces,
Giles, we shall be saved the hanging of them--ha! there sounds my
lord's horn, and 'tis the rallying-note--come away, Giles!"

Side by side they went, oft stepping across some shapeless horror,
until in their going they chanced on one that knelt above a child,
small and dead. And beholding the costly fashion of this man's armour,
Roger stooped, and wondering, touched his bowed shoulder:

"Sir Fidelis," said he, "good young messire, and art thou hurt,
forsooth?"

"Hurt?" sighed Sir Fidelis, staring up great-eyed, "hurt? Nay, behold
this sweet babe--ah, gentle Christ--so innocent--and slain! A tender
babe! And yonder--yonder, what dire sights lie yonder--" and sighing,
the youthful knight sank back across Black Roger's arm and so lay
speechless and a-swoon.

Quoth Roger, grim-smiling:

"What, Giles, here's one that loveth woman's finger-work no more than
thou!" Thus saying, he stooped and lifting the young knight in his
arms, bore him across the square, stumbling now and then on things
dim-seen in the dark, for night was at hand.

So thus it was that the folk of fair Belsaye town, men and women with
gnashing teeth and rending hands, made them an end of Tyranny, until
with the night, there nothing remained of proud Sir Gui and all his
lusty garrison, save shapeless blotches piled amid the gloom--and that
which lay, forgotten quite, a cold and pallid thing, befouled with red
and trampled mire; a thing of no account henceforth, that stared up
with glazed and sightless eyes, where, remote within the sombre
fi