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Then we went and spoke with the captain of the guard, who yet kept his post at the doors, as none had called him. "Maybe I am to blame," he said, when he heard all. "I should not have left a Dartmoor man from the country whence Tregoz came to keep watch there. I knew that he was thence, and thought no harm." "There is no blame to you," Owen said.
But I did not forget the plotting, and as the days wore on, and my thoughts of it grew a little clearer, I began to wonder if the thrall who saved me from the poisoned horn might not be the man who slew Tregoz on the ramparts at Norton in the moonlight.
I could not see that any of the folk on those lands, whether free or thrall, seemed other than glad that Owen was their lord now. It was said that Tregoz was little loved. We left a new steward in the great half-stone and half-timber house, with house-carles enough to see that none harmed either him or the place, and so came back to Norton.
Then I also saw in the dusk the figure of a man who crept softly from one great boulder to another, and without thinking of the terror of the shepherd I spurred my horse, and rode straight for the rock behind which the figure disappeared, having no mind to have an arrow put into me at short range by one of the men of Tregoz or of Morfed unawares.
Now he was back at Glastonbury, and I must join him there and go back to royal Winchester with him for the Easter feast. Owen and I also had been far westward at one time or another, in this space, though there is little worth telling beyond that we went even to the lands of Tregoz that had passed to him, and so took possession of them.
Little order was there in that market if the king was not there, and Morgan and his friends were in the town. Men have taken heart again since the coming back of Owen, for it was bad enough, as you may suppose by what happened to me. So I fled, and then Tregoz had me outlawed, with a price on my head, so that, being well known, I had to take to Exmoor and herd with others in the same case.
"Which of you was it who slew him?" asked Owen. "None of us, Lord. We cannot tell who it may have been. Even the sentry who keeps this beat is gone." "Doubtless it was he who slew him, and is himself wounded in the fosse. Look for him straightway." There they hunted, but the man was not to be found. Nor was it his weapon that had ended Tregoz.
None whom we know but Tregoz could have made sure of that mark, bright as the night is. Well it was, Lord, that you were not sleeping in your wonted place." Owen glanced at me to warn me to say nothing, and bade the men take the body to the guardroom.
"I have yet places where I am held as an honest man." Now I had enough of him, and I would not ask him more of himself yet I will say that my heart softened somewhat toward him, for I knew that here also he had been well thought of. Almost did I forget how he had treated me, for now that seemed a grudge against Tregoz.
I came back round the head waters of the Severn, through Wessex, where I was only a Weala, though, indeed, that is almost the same as an outlaw there; and there, by reason of Gerent's seeking for me, I changed my looks and watched for Tregoz, for I found that he was yet about the place in hiding.
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