In this fashion--slipping from tree to tree, and edging north-west--she held them for a furlong or more. The end came soon with an empty quiver. The wood seemed full of armed men; they were too speedy for her, too near to her for flight. She threw the empty quiver at her feet, with the bow athwart it, put a hand in the breast of her habit, and waited. It was not for long. A man ran out from behind a tree and came to a curt halt fronting her. He was young, burly, with a great tangle of hair, and a yellow beard that bristled like a hound's collar. A naked sword was in his hand, a buckler strapped between his shoulders. He laughed when he saw the girl--the coarse laugh of a Teuton--and came some paces nearer to her, staring in her face. She was very rich and comely in a way foreign to the fellow's fancy. There was that in his eyes that said as much. He laughed again, with a guttural oath, and stretched out a hand to grip the girl's shoulder. An instant shimmer of steel, and Igraine had smitten him above the golden torque that ringed his throat. Life rushed out in a red fountain. He went back from her with a stagger, clutching at the place, and cursing. As the blood ebbed he dropped to his knees, and thence fell slantwise against a tree. He had found death in that stroke. A hand closed on the girl's wrist. The knife that had been turned towards her own heart was smitten away and spurned to a distance. There were men all about her--ogrish folk, moustachioed, jerkined in skins, bare armed, bare legged. Igraine stood like a statue--impotent--frozen into a species of apathy. The bearded faces thronged her, gaped at her with a gross solemnity. She had no glance for them, but thought only of the man twitching in the death trance. The wood seemed full of gruff voices, of grotesque words mouthed through hair. Then the barbaric circle rippled and parted. A rugged-faced old man with white hair and beard came forward slowly. There was a tense silence over the throng as the old man stood and looked at the figure at his feet. There were shadows on the earl's face, and his hands shook, for the smitten man was his son. Out of silence grew clamour. Hands were raised, fingers pointed, a sword was poised tentatively above the girl's head. The wood seemed full of bearded and grotesque wrath, and the hollow aisles rang with the clash of sword on buckler. But age was not for sudden violence, though the blood of youth ebbed on the grass. The old man pointed to a tree, spoke briefly, quietly, and the rough warriors obeyed him. They stripped Igraine, cast her clothes at her feet, and bound her to the trunk of the tree with their girdles. Then they took up the body of the dead man, and so departed into the forest. III