Again spake Face-of-god after a while: ‘Tell me, sister, hast thou heard of any of the Dusky Men being slain in the wood?’ ‘Yea,’ she said, and turned pale therewith and caught her breath as one choking; but said in a little while: ‘This alone was it hard for me to tell thee amongst all the I griefs I have borne, whereof I might have told thee many tales, and will do one day if thou wilt suffer it; but fear makes this hard for me. For in very sooth this was the cause of my fleeing, that my master was brought in slain by an arrow in the wood; and he was to be borne to bale and burned in three days’ wearing; and we three bed-thralls of his, and three of the best of the men-thralls, were to be burned quick on his bale-fire after sore torments; therefore I fled, and hid a knife in my bosom, that I might not be taken alive; but sweet was life to me, and belike I should not have smitten myself.’ And she wept sore for pity of herself before them all. But Face-of-god said: ‘Knowest thou, sister, by whom the man was slain?’ ‘Nay,’ she said, still sobbing; ‘but I heard nought thereof, nor had I noted it in my terror. The death of others, who were slain before him, and the loss of many, we knew not how, made them more bitterly cruel with us.’ And again was she weeping; but Face-of-god said kindly to her: ‘Weep no more, sister, for now shall all thy troubles be over; I feel in my heart that we shall overcome these felons, and make an end of them, and there then is Burgdale for thee in its length and breadth, or thine own Dale to dwell in freely.’ ‘Nay,’ she said, ‘never will I go back thither!’ and she turned round to him and kissed his feet, and then arose and turned a little toward her mate; and the carle caught her by the hand and led her away, and seemed glad so to do. So once again they fell asleep in the woods, and again the next morning fared on their way early that they might come into Burgdale before nightfall. When they stayed a while at noontide and ate, Face-of-god again had talk with the Runaways, and this time with those of Rose-dale, and he heard much the same story from them that he had heard before, told in divers ways, till his heart was sick with the hearing of it. On this last day Face-of-god led his men well athwart the wood, so that he hit Wildlake’s Way without coming to Carl-stead; and he came down into the Dale some four hours after noon on a bright day of latter March. At the ingate to the Dale he found watches set, the men whereof told him that the tidings were not right great. Hall-face’s company had fallen in with a band of the Felons three score in number in the oak-wood nigh to Boars-bait, and had slain some and chased the rest, since they found it hard to follow them home as they ran for the tangled thicket: of the Burgdalers had two been slain and five hurt in this battle. As for Red-coat’s company, they had fallen in with no foemen. CHAPTER XXIX. THEY BRING THE RUNAWAYS TO BURGSTEAD.