But Morfed went on with his song and his waving, seeming to try to draw my look back to him, and I noted, as I glanced again at him, that a shade of doubt crossed his face, and at that a new thought came to me.  Maybe if he saw that I feared him not he would speak.  So I looked in his eyes and bade him be silent and hearken to what I said to him.

Some wave of anger flushed his face then, and he drew a pace nearer to me, but he was not silent, and the waving sickle was not still.  Neither of these things troubled me any longer, and I looked past them, in such wise that he might see that I meant him to obey me, even as one will look at a sullen thrall who delays to carry out an order given.  A captain of warriors will know what signs to watch for in a man’s face well enough, and slowly and at last I saw the look for which I waited steal across the face of the man before me, and then I raised my hand and said: 

“Be still, and answer me.”

The song stopped, and the lifted sickle sank with the hand that held it, and the eyes of Morfed left mine and sought the ground.

“What will you?” he said.  “Let me go, for it is time.”

“When you have answered,” I said sternly.  “Tell me, where is Owen?”

“In yonder pool,” he said, as a child will answer its teacher.

But if he answered as a child, his face was sullen as of a child that is minded to rebel, and I knew that he would try not to tell me aught.

“You lie,” I said coldly.  “Neither Christian priest nor Druid would dare set a prince of Cornwall in an unhallowed grave.  Tell me the truth.”

“Ay, I lied,” he said, speaking in a strange voice that seemed to come from him against his will.  And then he spoke quickly, without faltering or excuse.  “I led the men who should slay the despiser of the faith of his youth and friend of the Saxon, and we came to the house and destroyed it, but they slew him not.  Sorely wounded he was, and yet they would not do my bidding and make an end, but murmured at me.  Then they bore him away into the hills, saying that they would heal him of his hurts and thereafter win his pardon, for he was ever forgiving, and it is true that I told them not who it was they were to slay.  I said that it was Oswald the Saxon, who slew Morgan, and they were glad.  I do not know how it has come to pass that you are here.  I hate you!”

“Speak on, Morfed,” I said, for he had stayed his words on that, and I bent all my mind into that command as it were, so that he knew that I meant to be his master in this.

“Why should I not speak,” he said dully.  “Let me end quickly.  Ay, I went with them, thinking that he would die on the way, for he was sorely wounded, and I mocked them and threatened them in vain.  I led them to this place, and when they knew it they fled, and left him to me.  Wherefore I brought him here, that I might see him die—­I and these two carried him on the litter the men made.  Then will I bury him in no hallowed grave, for I myself spoke the uttermost ban of Holy Church against him, for that he had herded with the men of the Saxons who follow Canterbury, and has wrought for peace with them.”