"Thane," said the eldest priest to me just at this time, "I pray you ride on and tell the archbishop that you have indeed found what we sought. It is but right that all should be ready against the time we get back. We are not more than a mile away from the gates, and you will have time. This is slow travelling, perforce." Erling and I rode on with the reeve, therefore, and I thought no more of the blind man, as one may suppose, until I heard what had happened. When the two men went back to his help, he sat again by the side of the road, hiding his face in his hands on his knees. And he was trembling. "Friends," he said, "now I know why you go so sadly, welladay! For evil men have slain some one young and well favoured, as I learned even now, when I helped you yonder. Tell me what has befallen, I pray you, for I am afeard." "Why," said one of the men, "we are honest folk, as our being with the good fathers may be surety. The trouble is ours to bear." But the blind man still kept his eyes hidden, and when the other man bade him rise and come on with them he did not move. "I know not what ails me," he said. "Even as I set my hand on him you bear yonder, there came as it were a great flash of light across my eyes, and needs must I fall away and hide them. I fear that, not you, friends. I pray you, tell me what has been wrought." "His foes have slain a bridegroom, most cruelly," one of the men answered after a pause. "We do but bear him to Fernlea." "What bridegroom?" he asked, in a hushed voice. And then the pity of the thing came to him, and he wept silently. Presently he raised his head, dashing away the tears as he did so. "It is a many years since these eyes of mine have wept," he said. "It seems to me that to weep for the woes of another is a wondrous thing." His eyes of a sudden opened widely in the moonlight, and he cried out and clutched at the man next him. "Brothers! brothers!" he said; "what is this?" And again he set his hand to his eyes as if shading them, as does a man at noontide. "What ails you?" one of the men asked, wondering. "I have no ailment--none. I see once more!" he cried. "Look you, yonder is the blessed moon, and there lies a broken tree; and see, there are fires on the hills of the Welshmen!" Then with both hands wide before him he said: "Now I see that I have set my hands on one who can be naught but a saint most holy, for therefrom I have my sight again. Who is this that has been slain?" The men answered him, telling him. The blind man had heard, of course, of the poor young king, and had, indeed, been brought hither from wherever he lived that he might share in the largess of the wedding day. Now the men would go their way with him again, wondering, but yet half doubting the truth of what the man said. "It is in my mind that you have not been so blind as you would have us think," said one, growling. The man pointed at the cart as it went. "Would I lie in that presence?" he said.