The snow had effaced all tracks, but Sir Eustace speedily found the
spot where he had left the dead man, and there was the corpse,
stiff and frozen, but it was evident that the knight's description
given the previous evening was all too correct. The man had died in
great horror and anguish; the arrow yet remained in his body. It
was, as in the earlier cases, one of English make--a clumsy shaft,
unlike the polished Norman workmanship.
"We must search the whole district," said the baron; "but we had
better keep together."
Every one shared this opinion.
It was the unknown danger that troubled them, the thought that
supernatural powers were arrayed against them, that the English had
called the fiends to their aid, which terrified these hardened
warriors.
If the English had, indeed, sought by ghostly disguise to affright
their foes, they had well succeeded.
It was late in the morning before the glade was reached where our
party had rested, and the body of the man first slain was
discovered, and the whole band gathered around it.
Like the others, he had fallen by an English arrow.
The fear that all their friends had thus fallen became general, and
expressed itself in their countenances. The baron was livid.
There was no possibility of tracing the party, the snow had covered
the footsteps; but evidence was soon found in the fragments of
food--the remains of the carcase of the wild boar--to show that
this had been the midday rest, and that here the very beginning of
hostilities had taken place.
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