er, and chided her, as one might with a child, and said: 'Hold thy
peace of thy loves and thy hates before a very stranger! Or must I
leave yet more of my blood on the pavement of the White Pillar, for the
pleasure of thy loose tongue? Come out now, mountain-carle!'

"And she took me by the hand and led me out, and when we had passed the
door and it was shut, she turned to me and said: 'Thou, if I hear any
word abroad of what my Lady has just spoken, I shall know that thou
hast told it, and though I be but a thrall, yea, and of late a
mishandled one, yet am I of might enough in Utterbol to compass thy
destruction.'

"I laughed in her face and went my ways: and thereafter I saw many
folk and showed them my beast, and soon learned two things clearly.

"And first that the Lord and the Lady were now utterly at variance.
For a little before he had come home, and found a lack in his
household--to wit, how a certain fair woman whom he had but just got
hold of, and whom he lusted after sorely, was fled away. And he laid
the wyte thereof on his Lady, and threatened her with death: and when
he considered that he durst not slay her, or torment her (for he was
verily but a dastard), he made thy friend Agatha pay for her under
pretence of wringing a true tale out of her.

"Now when I heard this story I said to myself that I should hear that
other one of the slaying of my brother, and even so it befell. For I
came across a man who told me when and how the Lord came by the said
damsel (whom I knew at once could be none other than thou, Lady,) and
how he had slain my brother to get her, even as doubtless thou knowest,
Lord Ralph.

"But the second thing which I learned was that all folk at Utterbol,
men and women, dreaded the home-coming of this tyrant; and that there
was no man but would have deemed it a good deed to slay him. But,
dastard as he was, use and wont, and the fear that withholdeth rebels,
and the doubt that draweth back slaves, saved him; and they dreaded him
moreover as a devil rather than a man. Forsooth one of the men there,
who looked upon me friendly, who had had tidings of this evil beast
drawing near, spake to me a word of warning, and said: 'Friend
lion-master, take heed to thyself! For I fear for thee when the Lord
cometh home and findeth thee here; lest he let poison thy lion and slay
thee miserably afterward.'

"Well, in three days from that word home cometh the Lord with a rout of
his spearmen,