Chapter 29 - Page 2

companion, they moved
slowly, as priests returning from a sinner's death-bed, or rather
as spectres flitting along the precincts of a church-yard.

At length they reached a grassy mound, on the top of which was
placed one of those receptacles for the dead of the ancient
British chiefs of distinction, called Kist-vaen, which are
composed of upright fragments of granite, so placed as to form a
stone coffin, or something bearing that resemblance. The sepulchre
had been long violated by the victorious Saxons, either in scorn
or in idle curiosity, or because treasures were supposed to be
sometimes concealed in such spots. The huge flat stone which had
once been the cover of the coffin, if so it might be termed, lay
broken in two pieces at some distance from the sepulchre; and,
overgrown as the fragments were with grass and lichens, showed
plainly that the lid had been removed to its present situation
many years before. A stunted and doddered oak still spread its
branches over the open and rude mausoleum, as if the Druid's badge
and emblem, shattered and storm-broken, was still bending to offer
its protection to the last remnants of their worship.

"This, then, is the Kist-vaen," said the shorter pilgrim; "and
here we must abide tidings of our scout. But what, Philip Guarine,
have we to expect as an explanation of the devastation which we
have traversed?"

"Some incursion of the Welsh wolves, my lord," replied Guarine;
"and, by Our Lady, here lies a poor Saxon sheep whom they have
snapped up."

The Constable (for he was the pilgrim who had walked foremost) as
he heard his squire speak, and saw the corpse of a man amongst the
long grass; by which, indeed, it was so hidden, that he himself
had passed without notice, what the esquire, in less abstracted
mood, had not failed to observe. The leathern doublet of the slain
bespoke him an English peasant--the body lay on its face, and the
arrow which had caused his death still stuck in his back.

Philip Guarine, with the cool indifference of one accustomed to
such scenes, drew the shaft from the man's back, as composedly as
he would have removed it from the body of a deer. With similar
indifference the Constable signed to his esquire to give him the
arrow--looked at it with indolent curiosity, and then said, "Thou
hast forgotten thy old craft, Guarine, when thou callest that a
Welsh shaft. Trust me, it flew from a Norman bow; but why it
should be found in the body of that English churl, I can ill
guess."

"Some runaway serf, I would warrant--some mongrel cur, who had
joined the Welsh pack of hounds," answered the esquire.

"It may be so," said the Constable;