ened him. He did not think of it: he knew it.

At the end of his grim vigil he got up and went out of his house. He was
served with his horse, his esquires came at call to the routine of
garrison days and nights. He rode round the walls, out at one of the
gates, on a sharp canter of reconnaissance in the hills. Perhaps he
spoke more shortly than usual, and more drily; there may have been a
dead quality in his voice, usually so salient. There was no other sign.
At supper he sat before them all, ate and drank at his wont. Once only
he startled the hallful of them. He dropped his great gold cup, and it
split.

But as day followed night, all men saw the change in him, Christians and
Saracens alike. A spirit of quiet savagery seemed to possess him; the
cunning, with the mad interludes, of a devil. He set patient traps for
the Saracens in the hills, and slaughtered all he took. One day he fell
upon a great caravan of camels coming from Babylon to Jerusalem, and
having cut the escort to pieces, slew also the merchants and travellers.
He seemed to give the sword the more heartily in that he sought it for
himself, but could never get it. No doubt he deserved to get it. He
performed deeds of impossible foolhardy gallantry, the deeds of a
knight-errant; rode solitary, made single-handed rescues, suffered
himself to be cut off from his posts, and then with a handful of
knights, or alone, indeed, carved his way back to Darum. Des Barres, the
Earl of Leicester and the Grand Master, never left his side; Gaston of
Bearn used to sleep at the foot of his bed and creep about after him
like a cat; but this terrible mood of his wore them out. Then, at last,
the Count of Champagne came back with Milo and more bad news. Joppa was
in sore straits, again besieged; the Bishop of Sarum was returned from
the West, having a branch of dead broom in his hand and stories of a
throttled kingdom on his lips.

Before any other Richard had Milo alone. The good abbot is very reticent
about the interview in his book. What he omits is more significant than
what he says. 'I found my master,' he writes, 'sitting up in his bed in
his _hauberk of mail_. They told me he had eaten nothing for two days,
yet vomited continually. He had killed five hundred Saracens meantime. I
suppose he knew who I was. "Tell me, my good man," he said (strange
address!), "the name of the person to whom Madame d'Anjou took you."

'I said, "Sire, we went to the Lord of the Assassins