“Die! Lord of Gormez,” are his words, wiping his brow, as he watches the blood slowly ooze from the wound to mix itself, a sinister stream, with the sand. “Alas! had your courtesy equalled your knighthood and your birth, you might have lived to see your child’s children mine. Farewell, oh my enemy”; and he stoops reverently to cover the face of the dead with his mantle, reading the while with horror in the still set features the softer lineaments of his Ximena. “Alas!”--and his countenance darkens and he heaves a great sigh--“I am but Ruy Diaz, your lover, the most wretched of men! Oh! that I could lie there dead, instead of him! Ximena, oh, my love, will you ever forgive me?” And sorrowing thus he turns away by intricate windings to mount the hill to the Suelos where Don Diego awaits him, seated in the hall, the food lying on the table before him untouched. “Behold!” cries he, unsheathing the bloody sword. “The tongue which insulted you, Don Diego, is no longer a tongue; the hand which struck you is no longer a hand. You are avenged, oh, my father, and I----” He could not continue. With a loud laugh Don Diego rose up, taking in his hand the blood-stained sword and placing it beside him on the board below the salt; then turned to embrace Rodrigo. He spoke never a word, but stood like one stupefied, his arms folded on his breast, his eyes fixed on the ground. “Son of my heart,” says Don Diego, “I pray you turn and eat. Mourn not what you have done. My youth comes back to me in you. Greater than me shall you be, and win back broad lands from the Moors, and be rich like a king, when I am low in the dust. Take the head of the board, Rodrigo. Higher than myself is the place of the son who has brought the sword of Conde Gormez to his Suelos. The place of honour is yours, and I will pledge you with wine.” And as he speaks the old man rises, and taking Rodrigo by the hand places him above him, and with his own hand serves him with meat and drink. Poetry and the drama in latter days have much dealt with the story of the Cid, and altogether altered it from its ancient simplicity. Not so the chronicles, which depict the facts in the language of the time very straightforwardly, specially the chronicle of King Alfonso of Castile, surnamed _El Sabio_, written soon after the Cid’s death. If not penned by the hand of the king himself, at least it was largely dictated by him, and not at all partial, for as King of Castile he deeply resented the rebellion of the Cid against his father Alonso. CHAPTER XXIX. Marriage of the Cid and Doña Ximena Three years had passed when King Fernando solemnly knighted Rodrigo.