I found him there in the thickest
part--naked, slashing his body wildly with a knife in an agony of
remorse and penance and the most terrible grief I have ever witnessed.
Before he well knew what he was about he had blurted forth the whole
pitiful story--that he had killed his cousin in a moment of
passion--that he must scourge and torture his body to discipline his
soul. I--I shall not forget his face."
"Poor fellow!" said Mic-co. "My poor cousin!"
They wheeled suddenly at a choking sound in the doorway. Some wild
memory of the Grimwald had surged through the fevered brain of the sick
man. His clothes were gone, his body slashed cruelly in a dozen
places. He had torn down the buckskin curtain at his window and bound
it about his body in the fashion of earlier ages. How long he had
stood there in the doorway they did not know. Now as they turned, he
rushed forward and flung himself with a great heart-broken sob at the
feet of his cousin.
"Theodomir! Theodomir!" he cried.
Tregar turned away from the sound of his terrible sobbing.
CHAPTER LIV
ON THE WESTFALL LAKE
Hurrying clouds curtained the silver shield of a full moon and found
themselves fringed gloriously with ragged light. It was a lake of
white, whispering ghosts locking spectral branches in the wind, of
slumbering lilies rustled by the drift of a boat; a lake of checkered
lights and shadows fitfully mirroring stars at the mercy of the
moon-flecked clouds.
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