I will have no blood to- night; leave him to the wolves.

And now, begone with you: to Fierbois, if you will; I go my own road--alone." They wandered each his own way, sullen and murmuring, starved and weary.
What they had seen or fancied, and whether, if the rest saw aught strange, Brother Thomas saw nought, I knew not then, and know not till this hour.

But the tale of this ambush, and of how they that lay in hiding held their hands, and fled--having come, none might say whence, and gone, whither none might tell--is true, and was soon widely spoken of in the realm of France.
The woods fell still again, save for the babble of the brook, and there I lay, bound, and heard only the stream in the silence of the night.
There I lay, quaking, when all the caitiffs had departed, and the black, chill night received me into itself.

At first my mind was benumbed, like my body; but the pain of my face, smarting with switch and scratch of the boughs through which I had fallen, awoke me to thought and fear.

I turned over to lie on my back, and look up for any light of hope in the sky, but nothing fell on me from heaven save a cold rain, that the leafless boughs did little to ward off.