Then he lay back again, and turned his head as well as he could toward the cavern in the cliff.  But Ralph deemed he had heard his voice before, and his heart was softened toward him, he knew not why; but he said:  “Yea, but wherefore didst thou fall upon the Lady?” The wild-man strove with his weakness, and said angrily:  “What did another woman there?” Then he said in a calmer but weaker voice:  “Nay, my wits shall wander no more from me; we will make the journey together, I and my wits.  But O, young man, this I will say if I can.  Thou fleddest from her and forgattest her.  I came to her and forgat all but her; yea, my very life I forgat.”

Again he spoke, and his voice was weaker yet:  “Kneel down by me, or I may not tell thee what I would; my voice dieth before me.”

Then Ralph knelt down by him, for he began to have a deeming of what he was, and he put his face close to the dying man’s, and said to him; “I am here, what wouldst thou?”

Said the wild-man very feebly:  “I did not much for thee time was; how might I, when I loved her so sorely?  But I did a little.  Believe it, and do so much for me that I may lie by her side when I am dead, who never lay by her living.  For into the cave I durst go never.”

Then Ralph knew him, that he was the tall champion whom he had met first at the churchyard gate of Netherton; so he said:  “I know thee now, and I will promise to do thy will herein.  I am sorry that I have slain thee; forgive it me.”

A mocking smile came into the dying man’s eyes, and he spake whispering:  “Richard it was; not thou.”

The smile spread over his face, he strove to turn more toward Ralph, and said in a very faint whisper:  “The last time!”

No more he said, but gave up the ghost presently.  The Sage rose up from his side and said:  “Ye may now bury this man as he craved of thee, for he is dead.  Thus hath thy wish been accomplished; for this was the great champion and duke of the men of the Dry Tree.  Indeed it is a pity of him that he is dead, for as terrible as he was to his foes, he was no ill man.”

Spake Richard:  “Now is the riddle areded of the wild-man and the mighty giant that haunted these passes.  We have played together or now, in days long past, he and I; and ever he came to his above.  He was a wise man and a prudent that he should have become a wild-man.  It is great pity of him.”

But Ralph took his knight’s cloak of red scarlet, and they lapped the wild-man therein, who had once been a champion beworshipped.  But first Ursula sheared his hair and his beard, till the face of him came back again, grave, and somewhat mocking, as Ralph remembered it, time was.  Then they bore him in the four corners across the stream, and up on to the lawn before the cliff; and Richard and the Sage bore him into the cave, and laid him down there beside the howe which Ralph had erewhile heaped over the Lady; and now over him also they heaped stones.