They were walking towards the bridge when a splashing sound came up the river, and a black boat glided out of the mist, driven along by a man who wielded a long pole. A second man was drawing in a rope, and there was something at the end thereof, for the rope was taut and straight, with drops of water falling from it. The first man shipped his pole, and went to help his comrade with the rope, nor had either of them noticed Grimbald and Marpasse. A thing that glistened rose to the surface. The men reached over, and between them, dragged the body of a man in gilded harness into the boat. They grunted cheerfully over the catch, and disappeared below the gunwale. The boat lay in mid-stream, and there was the plash of the grapnel as one of the men heaved it out again into the river. Grimbald held up a hand to Marpasse, slipped down the bank, and dropped quietly into the water. A few long strokes carried him under the boat’s stern. And the great brown head that appeared suddenly over the gunwale so scared the two spoilers of the dead that they gaped at Grimbald, and lost the chance of knocking him back into the river. The bottom of the boat was littered with plunder from the bodies along the bank; and one of the men was cutting the rings from the hands of the knight they had fished up with the grapnel. Grimbald scrambled in, axe in hand. But he looked so huge, and fierce, and fateful in the grey of the morning that the men jumped for it, and swam like water rats, leaving the parish priest lord of the spoil. Grimbald poled the boat to the bank, lifted the dead man out, and laid him on the grass. He knelt and said a prayer for him, while Marpasse stood on guard with the axe, watching the two thieves who had crawled out on the near bank and were skulking behind a bush. Grimbald ended his prayer, and stood up and shook himself like a great dog. “Providence is at work here,” he said; “my prophecy will come true.” They climbed into the boat and ferried across, watched by the men who were waiting to recover their spoil. But Grimbald cheated them of their desire, for he stove out the planks with the end of the pole, and pushed the boat out to sink in the deeper water. “Let it return to the dead,” he said. “Those rogues shall catch no more fish to-day.”