“Mad Tom,” said Dick, recognizing the poor fellow.  “Tell us, Thomas, where are the folk of Dunwich?”

“Dead, dead; all dead!” he wailed, and fled away.

“Stay!  What of Master de Cressi?” called Hugh.  But the tower of the church round which he had vanished only echoed back across the snow, “What of Master de Cressi?”

Then at last Hugh understood the awful truth.

It was that, save those who had fled, the people of Dunwich were slain with the Sword of Pestilence, and all his kin among them.

They were on the Blythburgh Marshes, travelling thither by the shortest road.  The moon was down and the darkness dense, for the snow-clouds hid the stars.

“Let us bide here a while,” said Grey Dick as their horses blundered through the thick reeds.  “It will soon be sunrise, and if we go on in this gloom we shall fall into some boghole or into the river, which I hear running on our left.”

So they halted their weary horses and sat still, for in his wretchedness Hugh cared not what he did.

At length the east began to lighten, turning the sky to a smoky red.  Then the rim of the sun rising out of the white-flecked ocean, threw athwart the desolate marsh a fierce ray that lay upon the snows like a sword of blood.  They were standing on the crest of a little mound, and Dick, looking about him, knew the place.

“See,” he said, pointing toward the river that ran near by, “it is just here that you killed young Clavering this day two years ago.  Yonder also I shot the French knights, and Red Eve and you leapt into the Blythe and swam it.”

“Ay,” said Hugh, looking up idly, “but did you say two years, Dick?  Nay, surely ’tis a score.  Why,” he added in a changed voice, “who may that be in the hollow?” and he pointed to a tall figure which stood beneath them at a distance, half-hidden by the dank snow-mists.

“Let us go and see,” said Dick, speaking almost in a whisper, for there was that about this figure which sent the blood to his throat and cheeks.

He drove the spurs into his tired horse’s sides, causing it to leap forward.

Half a minute later they had ridden down the slope of the hollow.  A puff of wind that came with the sun drove away the mist.  Dick uttered a choking cry and leapt from his saddle.  For there, calm, terrible, mighty, clothed in his red and yellow cap and robe of ebon furs, stood he who was named Murgh the Fire, Murgh the Sword, Murgh the Helper, Murgh, Gateway of the Gods!

They knelt before him in the snow, while, screaming in their fright, the horses fled away.

“Knight and Archer,” said Murgh, in his icy voice, counting with the thumb of his white-gloved right hand upon the hidden fingers of his left.  “Friends, you keep your tryst, but there are more to come.  Have patience, there are more to come.”

Then he became quiet, nor dared they ask him any questions.  Only at a motion of his arm they rose from their knees and stood before him.