Wolf had not departed five minutes when Styr and his wife were startled by a strange scratching and whining at the other door, which caused their watch-dog to bark loudly, and when it was opened, Dame Isabel’s spaniel entered, looking the picture of woe, and ever and anon turning and pointing towards the door, and gazing earnestly in their faces, as if imploring them to follow. Styr and his wife guessed all, and without loss of time followed the dog into the woodland till they reached the leafless oak associated with traditions of Druidical rites, and there, within the broken circle of rough stones, lay a woman in a wimple and a russet gown, her hands clasped as if she prayed. It was Dame Isabel, and she was not dead but dying. The Anglo-Saxon and his wife carried her reverentially to their cottage, and used all the means in their power to restore her; but their efforts proved vain. She recovered, indeed, sufficiently to tell the sad story of her flight and of her wanderings; but, this done, she sank into a sleep from which she never awoke. Next morning she was a corpse, cold and rigid, and the monks from a neighbouring religious house, to which she had been a benefactress in the days when she was a great baroness and wife of one of Cœur-de-Lion’s most puissant knights, came and removed the body to their church, where masses were said for the soul that had departed under circumstances so melancholy, and then the remains of Dame Isabel were conveyed with all honour to Oakmede and laid among the bones of the Icinglas in the little chapel dedicated to St. Dunstan. CHAPTER XLIV A MYSTERIOUS EXIT Fortunately for Oliver Icingla, he did not persevere in his resolution of doing battle with a whole herd of wild bulls, for if he had he could hardly have failed to get the worst of the encounter, and died much more obscurely than, as the last of his line, it was his ambition to do. Immediately changing his plan, he hastened to climb the tree under whose branches he had made his couch; and having called the bloodhound to desist from the fray, he resolved on keeping the seat which he occupied till the cattle thought fit to take themselves elsewhere.