y here
at all.

"Which of you was it who slew him?" asked Owen.

"None of us, Lord. We cannot tell who it may have been. Even the
sentry who keeps this beat is gone."

"Doubtless it was he who slew him, and is himself wounded in the
fosse. Look for him straightway."

There they hunted, but the man was not to be found. Nor was it his
weapon that had ended Tregoz.

Then Owen said in a voice that had grown very stern: "Who was the
sentry who should have been here?"

The men looked at one another, and the chief of them answered at
last that the man was from Dartmoor, one of such a name. And then
one looked more closely at the arms Tregoz wore, and cried out that
they were the very arms of the missing sentry, or so like them that
one must wait for daylight to say for certain that they were not
they.

It was plain enough then. In such arms Tregoz could well walk
through the village itself unnoticed, as one of the palace guards
would be, and so when the time came he would climb from some hiding
in the fosse and take the place of his countryman on the rampart,
and the watchful captain would see but a sentry there and deem that
all was well.

Yet this did not tell us who was the one who had wrestled with and
slain him, and Owen told what had been done, while I went and
brought the bow and arrows from the foot of the rampart, in hopes
that they might tell us by mark or make if more than Tregoz and the
sentry were in this business. Then I looked at my window, and,
though narrow, it was as fair a mark in the moonlight as one would
need. Without letting my shadow fall on the sleeper, it was
possible to see my couch and the white furs on it, though it would
be needful to raise the arm across the moonlight in the act of
shooting. It was all well planned, but it needed a first-rate
bowman.

"It was surely Tregoz who shot," one of the men said. "The sentry
who was here was a bungler with a bow. None whom we know but Tregoz
could have made sure of that mark, bright as the night is. Well it
was, Lord, that you were not sleeping in your wonted place."

Owen glanced at me to warn me to say nothing, and bade the men take
the body to the guardroom. They were already cursing the sentry who
had brought shame on their ranks by leaguing himself with a
traitor, and it was plain that there was no need to bid them lay
hands on him if they could. That was a matter that concerned their
own honour.

So we left the guarding of the plac