echoes died away the horse, struck in its side by the keen arrow, sank
dying to the ground.

Then Murgh beckoned to the rider and he came as a man who must. But,
throwing down the bow, Grey Dick once more began to labour at the grave
like one who takes no further heed of aught save his allotted task.

Acour stood before Murgh like a criminal before his judge.

"Man," said the awful figure addressing him, "where have you been and
what have you done since last we spoke together in the midday dark at
Venice?"

Now, dragged word by slow word from his unwilling lips, came the answer
of the traitor's heart.

"I fled from the field at Venice because I feared this knight, and you,
O Spirit of Death. I journeyed to Avignon, in France, and there strove
to possess myself of yonder woman whom here in England, with the help
of one Nicholas, I had wed, when she was foully drugged. I strove
to possess myself of her by fraud and by violence. But some fate was
against me. She and that aged priest bribed the knave whom I trusted. He
caused a dead man and woman dressed in their garments to be borne from
their lodging to the plague pit while they fled from Avignon disguised."

Here for a moment Grey Dick paused from his labours at the grave and
looked up at Hugh. Then he fell to them again, throwing out the peaty
soil with both hands.

"My enemy and his familiar, for man he can scarcely be," went on Acour,
pointing first to Hugh and then to Dick, "survived all my plans to kill
them and instead killed those whom I had sent after them. I learned that
the woman and the priest were not dead, but fled, and followed them, and
after me came my enemy and his familiar. Twice we passed each other on
the road, once we slept in the same house. I knew them but they knew me
not and the Fate which blinded me from them, saved them also from all my
plots to bring them to their doom. The woman and the priest took ship to
England, and I followed in another ship, being made mad with desire and
with jealous rage, for there I knew my enemy would find and win her. In
the darkness before this very dawn I overtook the woman and the priest
at last and set my fellows on to kill the man. Myself I would strike
no blow, fearing lest my death should come upon me, and so I should be
robbed of her. But God fought with His aged servant who in his youth was
the first of knights. He slew my men, then fled on with the woman, Eve
of Clavering. I followed, knowing that