So strange a union of fierceness and piety may well astonish us, but our office is to relate the facts.

It was over, this strange but touching act of devotion, and the sacred hill was partially deserted.  Here and there a group of weeping penitents lingered, and on the spot where tradition asserted the cross to have been raised, many were seen yet waiting their turn to salute the ground reverently with their lips.

Two knightly warriors, a father and a son, who had just performed this act of devotion, arose together, and as they gained their feet, observed their immediate predecessor in the pious act, awaiting them, as if he wished to accost them.

They were all, as we have seen, bareheaded, neither did they wear any armour or weapons—­all resistance had ceased, and with it all warfare, before the ceremony of the day had begun.

“Father,” said young Edward, “it is my deliverer.”

The Knight of the Holy Sepulchre beckoned them to follow, and together they gained the outskirts of the crowd.

Etienne de Malville has greatly changed since we last beheld him.  In the place of the sprightly, impetuous youth, our readers must imagine a warrior, past the middle age; one whose scanty hair was already deeply tinged with gray.  Thirty years had left many wrinkles on his brow; but where impatience and fiery temper had once sat visible to all, age and experience had substituted self-control and wisdom.

“I have to thank thee, my valiant brother in arms, for the life of my son.  To whom do I render my thanks?  Well do I know thy fame as the Knight of the Holy Sepulchre; but our vow accomplished, we may lay aside our incognitos and assume our names once more.”

“We may indeed, and I will utter the name of one—­long since numbered with the dead in the records of men, and re-assume it upon this sacred mount.”

Etienne gazed intently upon the open face, but no look of recognition followed.

“I crave thy pardon, if I ought to recognise thee, yet truth compels me to say I do not.”

“Nor can I wonder; didst thou recognise me, thou wouldst think me a ghost permitted to revisit the land of the living—­one whom thou didst actually behold wrapped in the cere cloth of the tomb!—­whose funeral thou didst witness with thine own eyes!  Yet he lives, and feels sure that thou wilt not revoke, upon this holy hill, that pardon from the living, thou didst bestow upon the seeming dead.”

Etienne trembled.

“Art thou then? nay, it cannot be!”

“Etienne de Malville, I am Wilfred of Aescendune.”

For a moment Etienne turned pale, and gazed as if to make sure he did not behold a ghost or a vampire—­gazed like one startled out of his self possession, and the first emotion which succeeded was sheer incredulity; there was small trace of the once fair-haired English boy in the sunburnt, storm-beaten warrior of fifty to assist his memory.