the elbow, large and snowy white; from her fingers gems and gold
flashed at him. Prosper, who knew nothing whatever about it, judged
her midway between thirty and forty. Such was the lady; the man he had
no chance of overlooking, for the other had dropped her handkerchief
upon his face before she left him. "Sir," she now said, in a smooth
and distinguishable voice, when Prosper had saluted her, "you may do
me a great service if you will, which is to carry this dead man to his
grave in the wood."

"By the faith I have," Prosper replied, "I will help you all I can.
But when we have buried him you shall tell me how he came by his
death, and how it is that his grave is waiting for him."

"I can tell you that at once," she said quickly; "I have but just dug
it with a mattock I was so lucky as to find by a stopped earth on the
bank yonder. The rest I will gladly acquaint you with by and by. But
first let us be rid of him."

Prosper dismounted and went to take up his burden. First of all,
however, he deliberately removed the handkerchief and looked it in the
face. The dead man lay stiff and staring, with open eyes and a wry
mouth. Hands and face were livid, a light froth had gathered on his
lips. He looked to have suffered horribly--as much in mind as body:
the agony must have bitten deep into him for the final peace of death
never to have come. Now Prosper knew very little of death as yet, save
that he had an idea that he himself would never come to endure it; but
he knew enough to be sure that neither battle nor honour had had any
part here. The man had been well-dressed in brown and tawny velvet,
was probably handsome in a sharp, foreign sort. There was a ring upon
his finger, a torn badge upon his left breast, with traces of a device