st in the world.'

'Ha, domeneddio!' said the Marquess with a snort. 'I have that which
will abate such glory. Dearest Madame, we go to pray for your health.'
He kissed her hand, and drew away with him Saint-Pol, who was trembling
under the thoughts that fired him.

'Oh, my soul, Marquess!' said the youth, when they were in the glare of
day again. 'What shall we do to mend this wretchedness?' The Marquess
looked shrewdly.

'End the wretch who wrought it.'

'Do we go clean to that, Marquess? Have we no back-thoughts of our own?'

'The work is clean enough. You come to-night to the Tower of Flies?'

'Yes, yes, I will come,' said Saint-Pol.

'I shall have one with me,' the Marquess went on, 'who will be of
service, mind you.'

'Ah,' said Saint-Pol, 'and so shall I.'

The Marquess stroked his nose. 'Hum,' he said, advising, 'who might your
man be, Saint-Pol?'

'One,' said Eustace, 'who has reason to hate Richard as much as that
poor lady in there.'

'Who is that?'

'My sister Jehane's lover.'

'By the visible Host,' said Montferrat,' we shall be a loving company,
all told.' So they parted for the time.

The Tower of Flies stands apart from the city on a spit of sand which
splays out into two flanges, and so embraces in two hooks a lagoon of
scummy ooze, of weeds and garbage, of all the waste and silt of a slack
water. In front of it only is the tidal sea, which there flows languidly
with a half-foot rise; on the other is the causeway running up to the
city wall. Above and all about this dead marsh you hear day and night
the buzzing of innumerable great flies, and in the daytime see them
hanging like gauze in the thick air. They say the reason is that
anciently the pagans sacrificed hecatombs hereabout to the idols they
worshipped; but another (more likely) is that the lagoon is a dead
slack, and stinks abominably. All dead things thrown from the city walls
come floating thither, and there stay rotting. The flies get what they
can, sharing with the creatures of land and sea; for great fish feed
there; and at night the jackals and hyaenas come down, and bicker over
what they can drag out. But more than once or twice the sharks drag them
in, and have fresh meat, if their brother sharks allow it. However all
this may be, the place has a dreadful name, a dreadful smell, and a
dreadful sound, what with the humming of flies and dull rippling of the
sharks. These can seldom be seen, since the water is too thick; b