helmet, the straight, fine, ring-mail close-drawn round his face and
chin, the silky brown hair looking terribly alive against the dead
face. But across the eyes and the forehead below the helmet there was
laid a straight black band, and upon his breast the great mailed hands
clasped the cross-hilted sword that lay lengthwise with his body.
Gilbert, bareheaded and unarmed, gazed down into his father's face for
a while, then suddenly looked up and spoke to all the people who
thronged the gateway.

"Men of Stoke," he said, "here lies the body of Sir Raymond Warde, your
liege lord, my father. He fell in the fight before Faringdon Castle,
and this is the third day since he was slain; for the way was long, and
we were not suffered to pass unmolested. The castle was but half built,
and we were encamped about it with the Earl of Gloucester, when the
king came suddenly from Oxford with a great host; and they fell upon us
unawares at early morning, when we had but just heard the mass and most
of us were but half armed, or not at all. So we fought as we could, and
many fell, and not a few we killed with our hands. And I, with a helmet
on my head and a gambison but half buckled upon my body, and my hands
bare, was fighting with a full-armed Frenchman and was hard pressed.
But I smote him in the neck, so that he fell upon one knee and reeled.
And even in that moment I saw this sight. A score of paces from me, my
father and Sir Arnold de Curboil met face to face, suddenly and without
warning, their swords lifted in the act to strike; but when my father
saw his friend before him, he dropped his sword-arm and smiled, and
would have turned away to fight another; but Sir Arnold smiled also,
and lowered not his hand, but smote my father by the point, unguarded,
and thrust his sword through head and hood of mail at one stroke,
treacherously. And so my father, your liege lord, fell dead unshriven,
by his friend's hand; and may the curse of man and the damnation of