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.
Meanwhile Ursula knelt at the mouth of the cave and wept;
but Ralph turned him about and stood on the edge of the bank,
and looked over the ripple of the stream on to the valley,
where the moon was now beginning to cast shadows,
till those two came out of the cave for the last time.
Then Ralph turned to Ursula and raised her up and kissed her,
and they went down all of them from that place of death
and ill-hap, and gat to horse on the other side of the stream,
and rode three miles further on by the glimmer of the moon,
and lay down to rest amongst the bushes of the waste,
with few words spoken between them.
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