the wardour,
and ran to the feet of the lady. The animal's mouth was blood-stained,
and his glaring eye-balls and ruffled crest showed the extent of his fury
and despair.

"Something dreadful has happened to Sir Ralph," she cried, and urged
by the dog, who had seized her robe, she hurried through the gate,
and crossed the drawbridge, with a rapidity those who followed could
not arrest.

When the baron, his chaplain, and his domestics had proceeded a little
beyond a quarter of a mile upon the road, a fearful sight met their view.

The knight lay dead upon the green sward by the side of the highway; a
poignard which had effected the mortal wound, still rested fixed into his
back. His body was locked fast in the embrace of the Lady Alianore, who
lay senseless upon it: the dog stood by, howling piteously. No trace
could be discovered of who had done the deed. No proof was there beyond
the dagger itself, which was of Oriental fashion, and bore the
inscription in Latin _Hoc propter verba tua_; naught beyond that and
another circumstance, which went to show that the knight had been slain
by an eastern enemy. The dog, as he re-entered the castle, called
attention to some pieces of blood-stained rag, which, from their
appearance, had dropped from his mouth; one of these, the innermost, was
in texture and pattern evidently part of a Syrian garment.

The Lady Alianore did not die under this dreadful calamity: she lived to
mourn. The knight was interred within the precinct of the Abbey Church of
Gloucester; his tomb and effigy were in a niche at an angle of the
cloisters. Here would Alianore continually come, accompanied by Leo, who,
since his master's death, never left her side; here would she stop,
fixedly gazing upon the monument, the tear in her eye, and the chill of
hopeless sorrow in her heart. There are, indeed, few of us, who,
wandering through the interior of some noble ecclesiastical edifice, can
suppress a feeling of melancholy, when we view the sepulchre of a knight
of repute, who has died in his prime, in the midst of his achievements
and his fame, and who, clad in the harness of his pride, lies
outstretched in the marble before us. Courage and courtesy, chivalry and
Christianity, are buried there--there the breast, replete with honor, the
heart to feel, and the right arm to defend. The monument tells of the
sudden extinguishment of some bright light that shone in a semi-barbarous
age, which had its main civilizati