“He may shame me, sir, but he will never frighten me,” quoth Yeo; “but the bog, captains?”

“Tut!  Devonshire men, and heath-trotters born, and not know our way over a peat moor!”

And the three strode away.

They splashed and scrambled for some quarter of a mile to the knoll, while the cry became louder and louder as they neared.

“That’s neither ghost nor otter, sirs, but a true Irish howl, as Captain Leigh said; and I’ll warrant Master Shamus knew as much long ago,” said Yeo.

And in fact, they could now hear plainly the “Ochone, Ochonorie,” of some wild woman; and scrambling over the boulders of the knoll, in another minute came full upon her.

She was a young girl, sluttish and unkempt, of course, but fair enough:  her only covering, as usual, was the ample yellow mantle.  There she sat upon a stone, tearing her black dishevelled hair, and every now and then throwing up her head, and bursting into a long mournful cry, “for all the world,” as Yeo said, “like a dumb four-footed hound, and not a Christian soul.”

On her knees lay the head of a man of middle age, in the long soutane of a Romish priest.  One look at the attitude of his limbs told them that he was dead.

The two paused in awe; and Raleigh’s spirit, susceptible of all poetical images, felt keenly that strange scene,—­the bleak and bitter sky, the shapeless bog, the stunted trees, the savage girl alone with the corpse in that utter desolation.  And as she bent her head over the still face, and called wildly to him who heard her not, and then, utterly unmindful of the intruders, sent up again that dreary wail into the dreary air, they felt a sacred horror, which almost made them turn away, and leave her unquestioned:  but Yeo, whose nerves were of tougher fibre, asked quietly—­

“Shall I go and search the fellow, captain?”

“Better, I think,” said Amyas.

Raleigh went gently to the girl, and spoke to her in English.  She looked up at him, his armor and his plume, with wide and wondering eyes, and then shook her head, and returned to her lamentation.

Raleigh gently laid his hand on her arm, and lifted her up, while Yeo and Amyas bent over the corpse.

It was the body of a large and coarse-featured man, but wasted and shrunk as if by famine to a very skeleton.  The hands and legs were cramped up, and the trunk bowed together, as if the man had died of cold or famine.  Yeo drew back the clothes from the thin bosom, while the girl screamed and wept, but made no effort to stop him.

“Ask her who it is?  Yeo, you know a little Irish,” said Amyas.

He asked, but the girl made no answer.  “The stubborn jade won’t tell, of course, sir.  If she were but a man, I’d make her soon enough.”

“Ask her who killed him?”

“No one, she says; and I believe she says true, for I can find no wound.  The man has been starved, sirs, as I am a sinful man.  God help him, though he is a priest; and yet he seems full enough down below.  What’s here?  A big pouch, sirs, stuffed full of somewhat.”