When two nights and two days had passed, Dickon and Andreas found themselves on the furthermost edge of the forest. Here skirted the woodland a highroad which neither had seen before. Beyond this were a rolling moor country and distant mountains, the sight of which was strange to them; but house of any kind there was none.

When their eager gaze, sweeping all the prospect, had made certain that no habitation was to be seen, Dickon groaned deeply, and little Andreas wept outright.

As they stood thus, Andreas clenched his hands at his breast, lifting his white face upward toward the bare boughs. Then he closed his eyes, and staggering a single step, fell forward to the ground, and lay there on his face like a log.

Dickon lifted his comrade in his arms, and bore him back into the thicket. Out in the open where the two youths had viewed the highroad the earth was frozen stiff, and snow lay thin-spread upon it; but behind them, on the path they had made, lay warmer nooks sheltered by tangled shrubs.

To the first of these Dickon pushed his way, and putting the lad softly down, began gathering dry, dead leaves by armfuls and piling them over the senseless body. On these he laid branches, and then again more leaves, until only the boyish, sleeping face met the air.

Now he made another journey to the outer place which they had won, and gleaning from the ground the three things he had left there, brought them back to where the lad lay under his leaves, and put them down beside him. These were the crossbow, the book in its casket, and the mangled carcass of a boar which he had killed, but had eaten of more to his harm than good, since there was no fire with which to cook the meat.

Dickon looked down to his friend, and saw that the boy was awake, and sick unto death. Cold and hunger and the toil of wild wandering had dealt harshly with even Dickon\'s own tough English flesh and blood. They were killing the fragile lad from foreign parts.

"Do you get warmth?" he asked dolefully, as he had asked scores of other times.

For answer the lad closed his eyes and shook his head in weakness.

Then Dickon knelt down and did a thing strange to all his knowledge of customs. He kissed the pale forehead which lay half-hid among the leaves. Then, as if in shame, he sprang to his feet.

"Bide you here till I come," he said, and turning, strode off toward the open, with the crossbow under his arm.

For warmth\'s sake and the peril which brooded behind him, he swung himself forward at a swift pace down the highroad. The air and the movement kindled his blood a little.

A full league it seemed to him he must have tramped, over barren moorland and through winding defiles with steep, unfriendly sides of bare rock, before he came to anything that spoke of human habitation. Then, as the skies were darkening into twilight, he entered unawares into the deeper shadows of a great wall, gray and forbidding, rising above the highway like a part of the boulders themselves.

At the base of this, as if entering upon the heart of the earth, was a small, black door of wood, framed in frowning stone.

On this door of the monastery Dickon pounded with his fists, and with the handle of his weapon, and presently there came a sound as of bolts withdrawn. The door opened half-way, and a chalk-faced young friar in white gown and hood stood before him.

"Enter," this spectral figure said, and trembled with the cold.

"Nay, fire is what I seek," stammered Dickon, almost in fright at the ghost-like form before him, and at the strange sound of a tinkling bell echoing from the rocks overhead.

"Canst not wait till thou art dead for that?" the white-robed phantom said, in tones of earthly vexation. He would have shut the door at this, but that Dickon sprang forward, thrust his bow against the inner frame, and clutched the friar by the arm.

"Fire! fire!" he cried. "Give me that to kindle fire, or I kill you—like the others!"

The monk stood stock-still, and curled the thin corners of his lips in scorn at this rude boy, and held him with his bright, sneering gaze. Dickon looked into these sharp, cold eyes, and felt himself a noisy fool.

"Nay, father," he stumbled on, pleadingly, "if I get not a fire, he dies!"

"Hast thy head full of dead men, seemingly," the young Cistercian replied.

He cast his glance down over this rough visitor, and noting the blood-splashes upon his hose, lifted his brows in wrathful inquiry. Then he snatched up the crucifix from the end of the chain at his girdle, and thrust it swiftly into Dickon\'s face.

"Who art thou, churl?" he demanded. "Whose blood is this?"
"Whose Blood is This?"

"Whose Blood is This?"

Dickon\'s nerve sank into his shoes.

"A boar that I have slain, good father," he answered in a mumbling whimper, "and lack fire wherewith to roast it; and the raw flesh is ill food, and he can eat naught of it, and gets no warmth, and must die if I win not a fire."

At this the monk softened. He led Dickon into the outer porch, and gleaned the purport of his story. Only Dickon said nothing of the book or of the two men he had killed.

"Fire thou shalt have," the young monk said, more kindly, when Dickon\'s tale was finished. "But first go through the gates before thee to the hall, and take all thou wilt of meat and ale. None will deny thee. \'Tis the eve of holy Christmas, and though we fast, thou and thy kind may feed in welcome."

"It is only fire I seek," said Dickon, doggedly, though all his vitals clamored in revolt against the speech. "Food I will none till he hath supped."

"So be it," said the monk, and left Dickon alone under the groined archway in the growing darkness.

Presently he came again, and put flint and steel and tinder into the lad\'s hand. He gave him also a leathern bottle stopped with wax and a little cheese wrapped in fine straw.

"Bear these along," he said. "It is the Christmas eve. Peace be with you," and so motioned the boy away.

Dickon\'s tongue was not used to words of thanks, and he had turned in silence to go out when the monk called to him, and then came forward to the outer door.

"You were to kill me—like \'the others,\'" he said, with a grim smile curling his lips. "What others?"

"Two of Sir Watty\'s men, whom I smote down as they would have fallen upon him," said Dickon, pride struggling with apprehension.

The monk smiled at this outright, and departing again abruptly, returned with a pasty in a dish, enfolded in cloths.

"Now God be with you!" he said, heartily. "Hither bring your strange gossip on the morrow, if he find his legs."

Once outside the rock-girt postern, Dickon set to running, his arms full with the burden of the friar\'s gifts, and his heart all aglow with joy. It was a wearisome enough ascent, and the darkness of even was drawing ever closer over the earth, and the lad\'s empty stomach cried aloud at every furlong for food; but still he pressed on.

When at last he had gained the point on the road whence his quest had begun, the light had altogether failed. Then only he struck his flint, and set fire to some leaves. From these he kindled a knot of dry branches, and with this for a torch pushed his way into the woods.

"Andreas," he called out, when at last he stood above his friend, "here is fire and food!"

The white face among the leaves was the color of the snow he had left behind him. The eyes were half-open, but no answering light came into them. The boy lay as if dead.

With a startled cry Dickon let fall his spoils, and dropping to his knees, lifted the other\'s head up against his waist. It twisted inertly upon the thin neck and hung forward. Was life truly gone?

Like one in a daze, Dickon laid the boy down again among the leaves, and rose to his feet, still holding the bu............