clergy and the increasing fury of the mob, resistance was impossible, and Bertulph gave way, whilst Abbot Arnulph, giving thanks to God that he had escaped with a whole skin, was glad to go back to his monastery without the much-coveted treasure. This satisfied the people for the moment and they returned quietly to their homes, but in public estimation the crime of endeavouring to give Charles decent burial outside Bruges was as great a one as that of his murder, and in the sequel Bertulph had to pay dearly for it. On the following morning (Friday, March 4), after a solemn Requiem Mass had been chanted for him in the chapel of St. Peter outside the Bourg, Charles was laid to rest in the place where he fell in front of the Lady Altar in St. Donatian's. [Illustration: Angle of the Rue de l'Ane Aveugle] CHAPTER VI _Vengeance_ Meanwhile Charles's friends had been scouring the country far and wide, and wherever they went crying vengeance, and that not vainly. A bevy of thirty knights at once took up arms and swore they would not lay them down until they had washed them in the blood of the assassins, and--ominous note of warning--these men were all of them, or nearly all of them, partisans of the Erembalds. By common consent they chose Gervais Van Praet for their chief, and at once began to lay waste and plunder the lands and property of those who would not join them. Thus, gaining fresh recruits wherever they went, the little band rapidly grew into a vast army. Soon the town and fortress of Ravenschoot--a mighty stronghold of the Karls which, through some unaccountable blunder, had been left ungarrisoned--went up in flames; by the end of the week the smouldering embers of his brother Wulfric's palace, not a stone's throw from Bruges, warned Bertulph that the enemy was at his gates, and there was no sign of the reinforcements which William of Löo, who was perhaps in daily communication with the Provost, had promised to send from Ypres. Next morning, therefore, his nephews made a sortie beyond the ramparts, in the hope of putting the insurgents to flight, but after no little hard fighting they were smitten hip and thigh and forced to lead their shattered troops back to the city.