I looked about me. In that shivering light all was silent and still. Pure and white above me towered the temple of the Holy Rood, and to the right the black mass of the palace loomed against the sky, a phantom castle of cloudland. From two windows of the keep lights were burning like twin stars. It was there they kept the death watch of the King. It was there that the King’s Peace had come upon him, whose white lips had offered it to us that night when we stood by his bedside. For a space I watched the windows, and then moved hastily onward. The curse of Cain was upon me, and I could not rest. But now my strength began to give way, and the tremendous exertions of the past hours to tell upon me. I held on, however, passing through the labyrinth of streets beyond the cloisters, and drew up once more, utterly tired out, on the edge of a deserted and barren stretch of ground, covered here and there with the castaway rubbish of building materials. Across this waste was a small row of ruined houses. They had been gutted by fire, and the blackened and charred walls stood starkly up before me. Here, at any rate, was a refuge where I might lie securely till the morning, and stepping across the field, I slunk into the gaping doorway nearest to me, like a wolf seeking his lair, and worn out and exhausted sank down upon a heap of wreckage. But weary and broken though I was in body, my mind was awake, and the eternal self-torment ceased not for a moment. In my despair I dared to call upon God to have mercy upon me and ease me of my pain. I know not if that prayer ever reached beyond the moonlight. For a while I lay thus brooding, until my agony became once more intolerable, and hunted me from my place of rest. I rose on my elbow, when the sound of a sliding footstep and the crumbling of stones came to me, and I waited startled and expectant. Who was this other wanderer of the night that had sought the same dreary refuge as I had? Again I heard the footstep, slow and stealthy, but light withal. The noise came from within the house, and whoever it was must have entered before I had. Where I lay it was black shadow, but streaming through the door was a bright ribbon of moonlight, that stretched right in front of me, and over which the new-comer would have to pass. For a time there was a dead silence, then there was another cautious step, then another, and at last, with a light bound, a misshapen, ape-like figure leaped into the moonlight and stood glancing around. Strange and monstrous indeed was the shape--the height that of a child, the body that of a man. The long, black muscular arms, reaching below the knees, were bare. A tattered red cloak hung to his shoulders, and his head, from which two yellow eyes glared hideously, was bound up in a scarf that was wound round the jaws. For a breath I thought it was some goblin of the night, some evil spirit that stood before me in bodily presentment. Then the