"The warriors lowered their swords. Chram, whose face was bathed in blood, staggered a few steps forward and fell into the arms of his wife, who had rushed towards him, and now held him in a close and consoling embrace. Her two little daughters remained on their knees with their arms outstretched towards Clotaire, who descended from his foam-flecked horse. In his hand he held his long sword. His warriors made a circle around Chram and his family. Clotaire then sheathed his sword, folded his arms over his breast, and for an instant contemplated his son in silence. Chram fell on his knees; with clasped hands he implored his father's pardon, and then bowed down his head to the ground; his wife and two daughters sobbed aloud. Clotaire looked upon the group long in silence. Finally he issued his orders to one of the men in his suite. Chram, his wife and his two daughters were bound fast despite their frantic cries for mercy and desperate resistance. All the four were then dragged into the hut. Their piercing cries reached my place of concealment, distant though it was. A few minutes later Clotaire's warriors came out of the hut and closed the door. "'We bound them all firmly upon the bench, as you ordered, seigneur King,' one of them reported. "At the same moment I saw another warrior draw near the hut with a burning brand." "But what was the death that Clotaire reserved for his son and his son's family?" "The hut was constructed of wood and thatched with reeds. The three warriors of the King heaped around it bunches of dry seaweed and dead tree branches." "Oh, I can guess what is to come. Oh, Ronan--that is horrible. The father is going to burn his son, granddaughters and his son's wife!" "When a sufficient mass of these combustible materials was heaped up all around the hut, Clotaire made a sign. The warrior who held the burning brand blew upon it, and soon as it was in flame held it to the heap of dry wood and weed. In an instant the hut disappeared behind a roaring sheet of fire. The cries of the unfortunate beings who were about to perish in the flames became heartrending. I turned my head away in involuntary horror, and, as my eyes fell upon the high sea, I saw the light vessel speeding away under full sail and vanishing in the distant horizon--it carried away Imnachair, together with the treasury of Chram. "Clotaire has four sons left to him--Charibert, Gontran, Sigebert and Chilperik. It is said that the last of these seems to have inherited the ferocity of his father Clotaire and his grandfather Clovis!" EPILOGUE. On the morning after the day when Ronan, my brother Karadeucq's son gave us this account, he left us. These were his last words: "Kervan, I leave this house happy at having fulfilled the last wishes of my father and the orders of Joel."