Chapter XXXIII…

Chapter XXXIII

THEY met the landlord in the passage.

"Welcome, messieurs," said he taking off his cap with a low bow.

"Come, we are not in Germany," said Gerard.

In the public room they found the mistress, a buxom woman of forty. She curtsied to them and smiled right cordially. "Give yourself the trouble of sitting ye down, fair sir," said she to Gerard, and dusted two chairs with her apron, not that they needed it.

"Thank you, dame," said Gerard. "Well," thought he, "this is a polite nation: the trouble of sitting down? That will I with singular patience; and presently the labour of eating, also the toil of digestion, and finally, by Hercules his aid, the strain of going to bed, and the struggle of sinking fast asleep."

"Why, Denys, what are you doing? ordering supper for only two?"

"Why not?"

"What can we sup without waiting for forty more? Burgundy for ever!"

"Aha! Courage, camarade. Le dia--"

"C'est convenu."

The salique law seemed not to have penetrated to French inns. In this one at least wimple and kirtle reigned supreme; doublets and hose were few in number and feeble in act. The landlord himself wandered objectless, eternally taking off his cap to folk for want of thought; and the women, as they passed him in turn, thrust him quietly aside without looking at him, as we remove a live twig in bustling through a wood.

A maid brought in supper, and the mistress followed her empty handed.

"Fall to, my masters," said she cheerily, "y'have but one enemy here; and he lies under your knife." (I shrewdly suspect this of formula.)

They fell to. The mistress drew her chair a little towards the table; and provided company as well as meat; gossiped genially with them like old acquaintances: but, this form gone through, the busy dame was soon off and sent in her daughter, a beautiful young woman of about twenty, who took the vacant seat. She was not quite so broad and genial as the elder, but gentle and cheerful, and showed a womanly tenderness for Gerard on learning the distance the poor boy had come, and had to go. She stayed nearly half an hour, and, when she left them, Gerard said, "This an inn? Why it is like home."

"Qui fit François il fit courtois," said Denys bursting with gratified pride.

"Courteous? nay, Christian; to welcome us like home guests and old friends, us vagrants, here to-day and gone to-morrow. But indeed who better merits pity and kindness than the worn traveller far from his folk? Hola! here's another."

The new comer was the chambermaid, a woman of about twenty-five, with a cocked nose, a large laughing mouth, and a sparkling black eye: and a bare arm very stout but not very shapely.

The moment she came in, one of the travellers passed a somewhat free jest on her, the next the whole company were roaring at his expense, so swiftly had her practised tongue done his business. Even as, in a passage of arms between a novice and a master of fence, foils clash--novice pinked. On this another, and then another, must break a lance with her: but Marion stuck her great arms upon her haunches, and held the whole room in play. This country girl possessed in perfection that rude and ready humour, which looks mean and vulgar on paper but carries all before it spoken: not wit's rapier; its bludgeon. Nature had done much for her in this way, and daily practice in an inn the rest.

Yet shall she not be photographed by me, but feebly indicated: for it was just four hundred years ago, the raillery was coarse, she returned every stroke in kind, and, though a virtuous woman, said things without winking, which no decent man of our day would say even among men.

Gerard sat gaping with astonishment. This was to him almost a new variety of "that interesting species," homo. He whispered Denys, "Now I see why you Frenchmen say 'a woman's tongue is her sword'": just then she levelled another assailant; and the chivalrous Denys to console and support "the weaker vessel," the iron kettle among the clay pots, administered his consigne, "Courage, ma mie, le--" etc.

She turned on him directly. "How can he be dead as long as there is an archer left alive?" (General laughter at her ally's expense.)

"It is 'washing day' my masters," said she with sudden gravity.

"Après? We travellers cannot strip and go bare while you wash our clothes," objected a peevish old fellow by the fireside, who had kept mumchance during the raillery, but crept out into the sunshine of commonplaces.

"I aimed not your way, ancient man," replied Marion superciliously. "But, since you ask me" (here she scanned him slowly from head to foot), "I trow you might take a turn in the tub, clothes and all, and no harm done" (laughter). "But what I spoke for, I thought--this young sire--might like his beard starched."

Poor Gerard's turn had come: his chin crop was thin and silky.

The loudest of all the laughters this time was the traitor Denys, whose beard was of a good length, and singularly stiff and bristly: so that Shakespeare, though he never saw him, hit him in the bull's eye.

"Full of strange oaths and bearded like the pard." As You Like It.

Gerard bore the Amazonian satire mighty calmly. He had little personal vanity. "Nay, 'chambrière'" said he with a smile, "mine is all unworthy your pains: take you this fair growth in hand!" and he pointed to Denys's vegetable.

"Oh, time for that, when I starch the besoms."

Whilst they were all shouting over this palpable hit, the mistress returned, and, in no more time than it took her to cross the threshold, did our Amazon turn to a seeming Madonna meek and mild.

Mistresses are wonderful subjugators. Their like I think breathes not on the globe. Housemaids, decide! It was a waste of histrionic ability though; for the landlady had heard, and did not at heart disapprove, the peals of laughter.

"Ah, Marion, lass," said she, good-humouredly, "If you laid me an egg every time you cackle, 'Les Trois Poissons' would never lack an omelet."

"Now, dame," said Gerard, "what is to pay?"

"What for?"

"Our supper."

"Where is the hurry? cannot you be content to pay when you go? lose the guest, find the money, is the rule of 'The Three Fish.'"

"But, dame, outside 'The Three Fish' it is thus written--'Ici--on ne loge--'"

"Bah! Let that flea stick on the wall! Look hither," and she pointed to the smoky ceiling, which was covered with hieroglyphics. These were accounts, vulgo scores; intelligible to this dame and her daughter, who wrote them at need by simply mounting a low stool, and scratching with a knife so as to show lines of ceiling through the deposit of smoke. The dame explained that the writing on the wall was put there to frighten moneyless folk from the inn altogether, or to be acted on at odd times when a nonpaying face should come in and insist on being served. "We can't refuse them plump, you know. The law forbids us."

"And how know you mine is not such a face?"

"Out, fie! it is the best face that has entered 'The Three Fish' this autumn."

"And mine, dame?" said Denys; "dost see no knavery here?"

She eyed him calmly. "Not such a good one as the lad's: nor ever will be. But it is the face of a true man. For all that," added she drily, "an I were ten years younger, I'd as lieve not meet that face on a dark night too far from home."

Gerard stared. Denys laughed. "Why, dame, I would but sip the night dew off the flower; and you needn't take ten years off, nor ten days, to be worth risking a scratched face for."

"There, our mistress," said Marion, who had just come in, "said I not t'other day, you could make a fool of them still, an if you were properly minded?"

"I dare say ye did: it sounds like some daft wench's speech."

"Dame," said Gerard, "this is wonderful."

"What? Oh: no, no, that is no wonder at all. Why, I have been here all my life: and reading faces is the first thing a girl picks up in an inn."

Marion.] "And frying eggs the second; no, telling lies; frying eggs is the third, though."

The Mistress.] "And holding her tongue the last, and modesty the day after never at all."

Marion.] "Alack! Talk of my tongue. But I say no more. She, under whose wing I live, now deals the blow. I'm sped--'tis but a chambermaid gone. Catch what's left on't," and she staggered and sank backwards on to the handsomest fellow in the room, which happened to be Gerard.

"Tic! tic!" cried he, peevishly, "there, don't be stupid! that is too heavy a jest for me. See you not I am talking to the mistress?"

Marion resumed her elasticity with a grimace; made two little bounds into the middle of the floor and there turned a pirouette. "There, mistress," said she, "I give in, 'tis you that reigns supreme with the men; leastways with male children."

"Young man," said the mistress, "this girl is not so stupid as her deportment: in reading of faces, and frying of omelets, there we are great. 'Twould be hard if we failed at these arts, since they are about all we do know."

"You do not quite take me, dame," said Gerard. "That honesty in a face should shine forth to your experienced eye, that seems reasonable: but how by looking on Denys here could you learn his one little foible, his insanity, his miserable mulierosity?" Poor Gerard got angrier the more he thought of it.

"His mule--his what?" (crossing herself with superstitious awe at the polysyllable).

"Nay, 'tis but the word I was fain to invent for him."

"Invent? What can a child like you make other words than grow in Burgundy by nature? Take heed what ye do! why we are overrun with them already, especially bad ones. Lord, these be times. I look to hear of a new thistle invented next."

"But, dame, I found language too poor to paint him. I was fain to invent. You know Necessity is the mother of--"

"Ay! ay, that is old enough, o' conscience."

"Well then, dame, mulierose--that means wrapped up, body and soul, in women. So prithee tell me; how did you ever detect the noodle's mulierosity?"

"Alas! good youth, you make a mountain of a molehill. We that are women be notice-takers; and out of the tail of our eye see more than most men can, glaring through a prospect glass. Whiles I move to and fro doing this and that, my glance is still on my guests, and I did notice that this soldier's eyes were never off the womenfolk: my daughter, or Marion, or even an old woman like me, all was gold to him: and there a sat glowering; oh you foolish, foolish, man! Now you still turned to the speaker, her or him, and that is common sense."

Denys burst into a hoarse laugh. "You never were more out. Why this silky smooth-faced companion is a very Turk--all but his beard. He is what d'ye call 'em oser than ere an archer in the duke's body guard. He is more wrapped up in one single Dutch lass called Margaret than I am in the whole bundle of ye brown and fair."

"Man alive, that is just the contrary," said the hostess. "Yourn is the bane, and hisn the cure. Cling you still to Margaret, my dear. I hope she is an honest girl."

"Dame, she is an angel."

"Ay, ay, they are all that till better acquainted. I'd as lieve have her no more than honest, and then she will serve to keep you out of worse company. As for you, soldier, there is trouble in store for you. Your eyes were never made for the good of your soul."

"Nor of his pouch either," said Marion striking in, "and his lips they will sip the dew, as he calls it, off many a bramble bush."

"Overmuch clack! Marion; overmuch clack."

"Ods bodikins, mistress; ye didn't hire me to be one o' your three fishes, did ye?" and Marion sulked thirty seconds.

"Is that the way to speak to our mistress?" remonstrated the landlord, who had slipped in.

"Hold your whisht," said his wife sharply, "it is not your business to check the girl, she is a good servant to you."

"What is the cock never to crow, and the hens at it all day?"

"You can crow as loud as you like, my man--out o' doors. But the hen means to rule the roost."

"I know a byword to that tune," said Gerard.

"Do ye now? out wi't then."

"'Femme veut en toute saison, Estre dame en sa maison.'"

"I never heard it afore: but 'tis as sooth as gospel. Ay they that set these bywords a rolling had eyes and tongues, and tongues and eyes. Before all the world give me an old saw."

"And me a young husband," said Marion. "Now there was a chance for you all, and nobody spoke. Oh! it is too late now. I've changed my mind."

"All the better for some poor fellow," suggested Denys.

And now the arrival of the young mistress, or, as she was called, the little mistress, was the signal for them all to draw round the fire, like one happy family, travellers, host, hostess, and even servants in the outer ring, and tell stories till bedtime. And Gerard in his turn told a tremendous one out of his repertory, a MS. collection of "acts of the saints," and made them all shudder deliciously; but soon after began to nod; exhausted by the effort I should say. The young mistress saw, and gave Marion a look. She instantly lighted a rush, and laying her hand on Gerard's shoulder invited him to follow her. She showed him a room where were two nice white beds, and bade him choose. "Either is paradise," said he. "I'll take this one. Do you know, I have not lain in a naked bed once since I left my home in Holland."

"Alack! poor soul!" said she; "well then the sooner my flax and your down (he! he!) come together, the better; so--allons!" and she held out her cheek as business-like as if it had been her hand for a fee.

"Allons? what does that mean?"

"It means 'good-night.' Ahem! What don't they salute the chambermaid in your part?"

"Not all in a moment."

"What, do they make a business on't?"

"Nay, perverter of words, I mean we make not so free with strange women."

"They must be strange women if they do not think you strange fools then. Here is a coil. Why all the old greasy greybeards, that lie at our inn, do kiss us chambermaids; faugh! and what have we poor wretches to set on t'other side the compt, but now and then a nice young--? Alack! time flies, chambermaids can't be spared long in the nursery; so how is't to be?"

"An't please you arrange with my comrade for both. He is mulierose; I am not."

"Nay 'tis the curb he will want, not the spur. Well! well! you shall to bed without paying the usual toll; and oh but 'tis sweet to fall in with a young man, who can withstand these ancient ill customs, and gainsay brazen hussies. Shalt have thy reward."

"Thank you! But what are you doing with my bed?"

"Me? oh only taking off these sheets, and going to put on the pair the drunken miller slept in last night."

"Oh no! no! You cruel, black-hearted thing! There! there!"

"A la bonne heure! What will not perseverance effect? But note now the frowardness of a mad wench! I cared not for't a button. I am dead sick of that sport this five years. But you denied me: so then forthwith I behoved to have it; belike had gone through fire and water for't. Alas, young sir, we women are kittle cattle; poor perverse toads: excuse us: and keep us in our place, savoir, at arm's length! and so good-night!"

At the door she turned and said with a complete change of tone and manner: "The Virgin guard thy head, and the Holy Evangelists watch the bed where lies a poor young wanderer far from home! Amen!"

And the next moment he heard her run tearing down the stairs, and soon a peal of laughter from the salle betrayed her whereabouts.

"Now that is a character," said Gerard profoundly; and yawned over the discovery.

In a very few minutes he was in a dry bath of cold, clean, linen, inexpressibly refreshing to him after so long disuse: then came a delicious glow: and then--Sevenbergen.

* * * * *

In the morning Gerard awoke infinitely refreshed, and was for rising, but found himself a close prisoner. His linen had vanished. Now this was paralysis; for the night-gown is a recent institution. In Gerard's century, and indeed long after, men did not play fast and loose with clean sheets (when they could get them), but crept into them clothed with--their innocence, like Adam: out of bed they seem to have taken most after his eldest son.

Gerard bewailed his captivity to Denys; but that instant the door opened, and in sailed Marion with their linen, newly washed and ironed, on her two arms, and set it down on the table.

"Oh you good girl," cried Gerard.

"Alack, have you found me out at last?"

"Yes indeed. Is this another custom?"

"Nay, not to take them unbidden: but at night we aye question travellers, are they for linen washed. So I came in to you: but you were both sound. Then said I to the little mistress, 'La! where is the sense of waking wearied men, t'ask them is Charles the Great dead, and would they liever carry foul linen or clean, especially this one with a skin like cream.' 'And so he has, I declare,' said the young mistress."

* * * * *

"That was me," remarked Denys with the air of a commentator.

"Guess once more, and you'll hit the mark."

"Notice him not, Marion; he is an impudent fellow; and I am sure we cannot be grateful enough for your goodness, and I am sorry I ever refused you--anything you fancied you should like."

"Oh, are ye there," said l'espiègle. "I take that to mean you would fain brush the morning dew off, as your bashful companion calls it; well then, excuse me, 'tis customary, but not prudent. I decline. Quits with you, lad."

"Stop! stop!" cried Denys as she was making off victorious, "I am curious to know how many of ye were here last night a-feasting your eyes on us twain.'"

"'Twas so satisfactory a feast as we weren't half a minute over't. Who? why the big mistress, the little mistress, Janet and me, and the whole posse comitatus, on tiptoe. We mostly make our rounds, the last thing not to get burned down; and in prodigious numbers. Somehow that maketh us bolder, especially where archers lie scattered about."

"Why did not you tell me? I'd have lain awake."

"Beau sire, the saying goes that the good and the ill are all one while their lids are closed. So we said 'Here is one, who will serve God best asleep. Break not his rest!'"

"She is funny," said Gerard dictatorially.

"I must be either that or knavish."

"How so?"

"Because 'The Three Fish' pay me to be funny. You will eat before you part? Good! then I'll go see the meat be fit for such worshipful teeth."

* * * * *

"Denys!"

"What is your will?"

"I wish that was a great boy, and going along with us, to keep us cheery."

"So do not I. But I wish it was going along with us as it is."

"Now Heaven forfend! A fine fool you would make of yourself."

* * * * *

They broke their fast, settled their score, and said farewell. Then it was they found Marion had not exaggerated the "custom of the country." The three principal women took and kissed them right heartily, and they kissed the three principal women. The landlord took and kissed them, and they kissed the landlord; and the cry was "Come back, the sooner the better!"

"Never pass 'The Three Fish;' should your purses be void, bring yourselves: 'le sieur crédit' is not dead for you."

And they took the road again.

They came to a little town, and Denys went to buy shoes. The shopkeeper was in the doorway, but wide awake. He received Denys with a bow down to the ground. The customer was soon fitted, and followed to the street, and dismissed with graceful salutes from the doorstep.

The friends agreed it was Elysium to deal with such a shoemaker as this. "Not but what my German shoes have lasted well enough," said Gerard the just.

Outside the town was a pebbled walk.

"This is to keep the burghers' feet dry, a-walking o' Sundays with their wives and daughters," said Denys.

Those simple words of Denys, one stroke of a careless tongue, painted "home" in Gerard's heart. "Oh! how sweet," said he. "Mercy! what is this? A gibbet; and ugh, two skeletons thereon! Oh, Denys, what a sorry sight to woo by!"

"Nay," said Denys, "a comfortable sight; for every rogue i' the air there is one the less a-foot."

A little farther on they came to two pillars, and between these was a huge wheel closely studded with iron prongs; and entangled in these were bones and fragments of cloth miserably dispersed over the wheel.

Gerard hid his face in his hands. "Oh to think those patches and bones are all that is left of a man! Of one who was what we are now."

"Excusez! a thing that went on two legs and stole; are we no more than that?"

"How know ye he stole? Have true men never suffered death and torture too?"

"None of my kith ever found the way to the gibbet, I know."

"The better their luck. Prithee how died the saints?"

"Hard. But not in Burgundy."

"Ye massacred them wholesale at Lyons, and that is on Burgundy's threshold. To you the gibbet proves the crime; because you read not story. Alas! had you stood on Calvary that bloody day we sigh for to this hour, I tremble to think you had perhaps shouted for joy at the gibbet builded there; for the cross was but the Roman gallows, Father Martin says."

"The blaspheming old hound!"

"Oh fie! fie! a holy and a book-learned man. Ay, Denys, y'had read them, that suffered there, by the bare light of the gibbet. 'Drive in the nails!' y'had cried: 'drive in the spear! Here be three malefactors. Three "roués."' Yet of those little three one was the first Christian saint, and another was the Saviour of the world which gibbeted him."

Denys assured him on his honour they managed things better in Burgundy. He added too after profound reflection, that the horrors Gerard had alluded to had more than once made him curse and swear with rage when told by the good curé in his native village at Easter-tide; "but they chanced in an outlandish nation; and near a thousand years agone. Mort de ma vie, let us hope it is not true: or at least sore exaggerated. Do but see how all tales gather as they roll!"

Then he reflected again, and all in a moment turned red with ire. "Do ye not blush to play with your book-craft on your unlettered friend, and throw dust in his eyes, evening the saints with these reptiles?"

Then suddenly he recovered his good humour. "Since your heart beats for vermin, feel for the carrion crows! they be as good vermin as these: would ye send them to bed supperless, poor pretty poppets? Why, these be their larder: the pangs of hunger would gnaw them dead, but for cold cutpurse hung up here and there."

Gerard, who had for some time maintained a dead silence, informed him the subject was closed between them and for ever. "There are things," said he, "in which our hearts seem wide as the poles asunder, and eke our heads. But I love thee dearly all the same," he added with infinite grace and tenderness.

Towards afternoon they heard a faint wailing noise on ahead: it grew distincter as they proceeded. Being fast walkers they soon came up with its cause: a score of pikemen, accompanied by several constables, were marching along, and in advance of them was a herd of animals they were driving. These creatures, in number rather more than a hundred, were of various ages, only very few were downright old: the males were downcast and silent. It was the females from whom all the outcry came. In other words the animals thus driven along at the law's point were men and women.

"Good Heaven!" cried Gerard. "What a band of them! But stay, surely all those children cannot be thieves: why there are some in arms. What on earth is this, Denys?"

Denys advised him to ask that "bourgeois" with the badge. "This is Burgundy: here a civil question ever draws a civil reply."

Gerard went up to the officer and removing his cap, a civility which was immediately returned, said, "For our Lady's sake, sir, what do ye with these poor folk?"

"Nay, what is that to you, my lad?" replied the functionary suspiciously.

"Master, I'm a stranger, and athirst for knowledge."

"That is another matter. What are we doing? ahem. Why we--Dost hear, Jacques? Here is a stranger seeks to know what we are doing," and the two machines were tickled that there should be a man who did not know something they happened to know. In all ages this has tickled. However the chuckle was brief, and moderated by their native courtesy, and the official turned to Gerard again. "What we are doing? hum!" and now he hesitated not from any doubt as to what he was doing, but because he was hunting for a single word that should convey the matter.

"Ce que nous faisons, mon gars?--Mais--dam--NOUS TRANSVASONS."

"You decant? that should mean you pour from one vessel to another."

"Precisely." He explained that last year the town of Charmes had been sore thinned by a pestilence, whole houses emptied and trades short of hands. Much ado to get in the rye; and the flax half spoiled. So the bailiff and aldermen had written to the duke's secretary; and the duke he sent far and wide to know what town was too full. "That are we," had the baillie of Toul writ back. "Then send four or five score of your townsfolk," was the order. "Was not this to decant the full town into the empty, and is not the good duke the father of his people, and will not let the duchy be weakened, nor its fair towns laid waste, by sword nor pestilence; but meets the one with pike, and arbalest (touching his cap to the sergeant and Denys alternately), and t'other with policy? LONG LIVE THE DUKE!"

The pikemen of course were not to be outdone in loyalty: so they shouted with stentorian lungs "LONG LIVE THE DUKE!" Then the decanted ones, partly because loyalty was a nonreasoning sentiment in those days, partly perhaps because they feared some further ill consequence should they alone be mute, raised a feeble tremulous shout "Long live the Duke!"

But, at this, insulted nature rebelled. Perhaps indeed the sham sentiment drew out the real, for, on the very heels of that loyal noise, a loud and piercing wail burst from every woman's bosom and a deep groan from every man's; oh! the air filled in a moment with womanly and manly anguish. Judge what it must have been when the rude pikemen halted unbidden, all confused; as if a wall of sorrow had started up before them.

"En avant," roared the sergeant, and they marched again, but muttering and cursing.

"Ah the ugly sound," said the civilian, wincing. "Les malheureux!" cried he ruefully: for where is the single man can hear the sudden agony of a multitude and not be moved? "Les ingrats! They are going whence they were de trop to where they will be welcome: from starvation to plenty--and they object. They even make dismal noises. One would think we were thrusting them forth from Burgundy."

"Come away," whispered Gerard, trembling; "come away," and the friends strode forward.

When they passed the head of the column, and saw the men walk with their eyes bent in bitter gloom upon the ground, and the women, some carrying, some leading, little children, and weeping as they went, and the poor bairns, some frolicking, some weeping because "their mammies" wept, Gerard tried hard to say a word of comfort, but choked and could utter nothing to the mourners; but gasped: "Come on, Denys. I cannot mock such sorrow with little words of comfort." And now, artist-like, all his aim was to get swiftly out of the grief he could not soothe. He almost ran not to hear these sighs and sobs.

"Why, mate," said Denys, "art the colour of a lemon. Man alive, take not other folks' troubles to heart! not one of those whining milksops there but would see thee, a stranger, hanged without winking."

Gerard scarce listened to him.

"Decant them?" he groaned: "ay, if blood were no thicker than wine. Princes, ye are wolves. Poor things! Poor things! Ah, Denys! Denys! with looking on their grief mine own comes home to me. Well-a-day. Ah, well-a-day!"

"Ay, now you talk reason. That you, poor lad, should be driven all the way from Holland to Rome, is pitiful indeed. But these snivelling curs, where is their hurt? There is six score of 'em to keep one another company: besides they are not going out of Burgundy."

"Better for them if they had never been in it."

"Méchant, va! they are but going from one village to another, a mule's journey! whilst thou--there, no more. Courage, camarade, le diable est mort."

Gerard shook his head very doubtfully, but kept silence for about a mile, and then he said thoughtfully, "Ay, Denys, but then I am sustained by book-learning. These are simple folk that likely thought their village was the world: now what is this? more weeping. Oh! 'tis a sweet world. Humph? A little girl that hath broke her pipkin. Now may I hang on one of your gibbets but I'll dry somebody's tears:" and he pounced savagely upon this little martyr, like a kite on a chick, but with more generous intentions. It was a pretty little lass of about twelve: the tears were raining down her two peaches, and her palms lifted to heaven in that utter, though temporary, desolation, which attends calamity at twelve; and at her feet the fatal cause, a broken pot, worth, say the fifth of a modern farthing.

"What, hast broken thy pot, little one?" said Gerard, acting intensest sympathy.

"Hélas! bel gars; as you behold;" and the hands came down from the sky and both pointed at the fragments. A statuette of adversity.

"And you weep so for that?"

"Needs I must, bel gars. My mammy will massacre me. Do they not already" (with a fresh burst of woe) "c-c-call me J-J-Jean-net-on C-c-casse tout? It wanted but this; that I should break my poor pot. Hélas! fallait-il donc, mère de Dieu?"

"Courage, little love," said Gerard: "'tis not thy heart lies broken; money will soon mend pots. See now, here is a piece of silver, and there, scarce a stone's throw off, is a potter; take the bit of silver to him, and buy another pot, and the copper the potter will give thee keep that to play with thy comrades."

The little mind took in all this, and smiles began to struggle with the tears: but spasms are like waves, they cannot go down the very moment the wind of trouble is lulled. So Denys thought well to bring up his reserve of consolation. "Courage, ma mie, le diable est mort!" cried that inventive warrior gaily. Gerard shrugged his shoulders at such a way of cheering a little girl.

"What a fine thing Is a lute with one string,"

said he.

The little girl's face broke into warm sunshine.

"Oh, the good news! oh, the good news!" she sang out with such heartfelt joy, it went off into a honeyed whine; even as our gay old tunes have a pathos underneath. "So then," said she, "they will no longer be able to threaten us little girls with him, MAKING OUR LIVES A BURDEN!" And she bounded off "to tell Nanette," she said.

There is a theory that everything has its counterpart; if true, Denys it would seem had found the mind his consigne fitted.

While he was roaring with laughter at its unexpected success and Gerard's amazement, a little hand pulled his jerkin and a little face peeped round his waist. Curiosity was now the dominant passion in that small but vivid countenance.

"Est-ce toi qui l'a tué, beau soldat?"

"Oui, ma mie," said Denys, as gruffly as ever he could, rightly deeming this would smack of supernatural puissance to owners of bell-like trebles. "C'est moi. Çà vaut une petite embrassade--pas?"

"Je crois ben. Aie! aie!"

"Qu'as-tu?"

"Çà pique! Çà pique!"

"Quel dommage! je vais la couper."

"Nenni, ce n'est rien; et pisque t'as tué ce méchant. T'es fièrement beau, tout d' même, toi; t'es ben miex que ma grande sœur."

"Will you not kiss me too, ma mie?" said Gerard.

"Je ne demande par miex. Tiens, tiens, tiens! c'est doulce celle-ci. Ah, que j'aimons les hommes! Des fames, çà ne m'aurait jamais donné l'arjan blanc, plutôt çà m'aurait ri au nez. C'est si peu de chose, les fames. Serviteur, beaulx sires! Bon voiage; et n'oubliez point la Jeanneton!"

"Adieu, petit cœur," said Gerard, and on they marched: but presently looking back they saw the contemner of women in the middle of the road, making them a reverence, and blowing them kisses with little May morning face.

"Come on," cried Gerard lustily. "I shall win to Rome yet. Holy St. Bavon, what a sunbeam of innocence hath shot across our bloodthirsty road! Forget thee, little Jeanneton? not likely, amidst all this slobbering, and gibbeting, and decanting. Come on, thou laggard! forward!"

"Dost call this marching?" remonstrated Denys: "why we shall walk o'er Christmas-day and never see it."

At the next town they came to, suddenly an arbalestrier ran out of a tavern after them, and in a moment his beard and Denys's were like two brushes stuck together. It was a comrade. He insisted on their coming into the tavern with him, and breaking a bottle of wine. In course of conversation, he told Denys there was an insurrection in the duke's Flemish provinces, and soldiers were ordered thither from all parts of Burgundy. "Indeed I marvelled to see thy face turned this way."

"I go to embrace my folk that I have not seen these three years. Ye can quell a bit of a rising without me I trow."

Suddenly Denys gave a start. "Dost hear, Gerard? this comrade is bound for Holland."

"What then? ah, a letter! a letter to Margaret! but will he be so good, so kind?"

The soldier with a torrent of blasphemy informed him he would not only take it, but go a league or two out of his way to do it.

In an instant out came inkhorn and paper from Gerard's wallet; and he wrote a long letter to Margaret, and told her briefly what I fear I have spun too tediously; dwelt most on the bear, and the plunge in the Rhine, and the character of Denys, whom he painted to the life. And with many endearing expressions bade her be of good cheer; some trouble and peril there had been, but all that was over now, and his only grief left was that he could not hope to have a word from her hand till he should reach Rome. He ended with comforting her again as hard as he could. And so absorbed was he in his love and his work, that he did not see all the people in the room were standing peeping, to watch the nimble and true finger execute such rare penmanship.

Denys, proud of his friend's skill, let him alone, till presently the writer's face worked, and soon the scalding tears began to run down his young cheeks, one after another, on the paper where he was then writing comfort, comfort. Then Denys rudely repulsed the curious, and asked his comrade with a faltering voice whether he had the heart to let so sweet a love letter miscarry? The other swore by the face of St. Luke he would lose the forefinger of his right hand sooner.

Seeing him so ready, Gerard charged him also with a short, cold letter to his parents; and in it he drew hastily with his pen two hands grasping each other, to signify farewell. By-the-by, one drop of bitterness found its way into his letter to Margaret. "I write to thee alone, and to those who love thee. If my flesh and blood care to hear news of me, they must be kind to thee and then thou mayst read my letter to them. But not else, and even then let this not out of thy hand or thou lovest me not. I know what I ask of thee, and why I ask it. Thou knowest not. I am older now by many years than thou art, and I was a month agone. Therefore obey me in this one thing, dear heart, or thou wilt make me a worse wife than I hope to make thee a husband, God willing."

On second thoughts I believe there was something more than bitterness in this. For his mind, young but intense, had been bent many hours in every day upon Sevenbergen and Tergou, and speculated on every change of feeling and circumstance that his exile might bring about.

Gerard now offered money to the soldier. He hesitated, but declined it. "No, no! art comrade of my comrade; and may"----(etc.)----"but thy love for the wench touches me. I'll break another bottle at thy charge an thou wilt, and so cry quits."

"Well said, comrade," cried Denys. "Hadst taken money, I had invited thee to walk in the court-yard and cross swords with me."

"Whereupon I had cut thy comb for thee," retorted the other.

"Hadst done thy endeavour, drôle, I doubt not."

They drank the new bottle, shook hands, adhered to custom, and parted on opposite routes.

This delay however somewhat put out Denys's calculations, and evening surprised them ere they reached a little town he was making for, where was a famous hotel. However, they fell in with a roadside auberge, and Denys, seeing a buxom girl at the door, said, "This seems a decent inn," and led the way into the kitchen. They ordered supper, to which no objection was raised, only the landlord requested them to pay for it beforehand. It was not an uncommon proposal in any part of the world. Still it was not universal, and Denys was nettled, and dashed his hand somewhat ostentatiously into his purse and pulled out a gold angel. "Count me the change, and speedily," said he. "You tavern-keepers are more likely to rob me than I you."

While the supper was preparing, Denys disappeared, and was eventually found by Gerard in the yard, helping Manon, his plump but not bright decoy duck, to draw water, and pouring extravagant compliments into her dullish ear. Gerard grunted and returned to table, but Denys did not come in for a good quarter of an hour.

"Up-hill work at the end of a march," said he shrugging his shoulders.

"What matters that to you?" said Gerard, drily. "The mad dog bites all the world."

"Exaggerator. You know I bite but the fairer half. Well, here comes supper; that is better worth biting."

During supper the girl kept constantly coming in and out, and looking point-blank at them, especially at Denys; and at last in leaning over him to remove a dish, dropped a word in his ear; and he replied with a nod.

As soon as supper was cleared away, Denys rose and strolled to the door, telling Gerard the sullen fair had relented, and given him a little rendezvous in the stable yard.

Gerard suggested that the cow-house would have been a more appropriate locality. "I shall go to bed, then," said he, a little crossly. "Where is the landlord? out at this time of night? no matter. I know our room. Shall you be long, pray?"

"Not I. I grudge leaving the fire and thee. But what can I do? There are two sorts of invitations a Burgundian never declines."

Denys found a figure seated by the well. It was Manon; but instead of receiving him as he thought he had a right to expect, coming by invitation, all she did was to sob. He asked her what ailed her? She sobbed. Could he do anything for her? She sobbed.

The good-natured Denys, driven to his wits' end, which was no great distance, proffered the custom of the country by way of consolation. She repulsed him roughly, "Is it a time for fooling?" said she, and sobbed.

"You seem to think so," said Denys, waxing wroth. But the next moment he added, tenderly, "and I who could never bear to see beauty in distress."

"It is not for myself."

"Who then? your sweetheart?"

"Oh, que nenni. My sweetheart is not on earth now: and to think I have not an écu to buy masses for his soul;" and in this shallow nature the grief seemed now to be all turned in another direction.

"Come, come," said Denys, "shalt have money to buy masses for thy dead lad; I swear it. Meantime tell me why you weep."

"For you."

"For me? Art mad?"

"No. I am not mad. 'Tis you that were mad to open your purse before him."

The mystery seemed to thicken, and Denys wearied of stirring up the mud by questions, held his peace to see if it would not clear of itself. Then the girl finding herself no longer questioned seemed to go through some internal combat. At last she said, doggedly and aloud, "I will. The Virgin give me courage! What matters it if they kill me, since he is dead? Soldier, the landlord is out."

"Oh, is he?"

"What, do landlords leave their taverns at this time of night? also see what a tempest! We are sheltered here, but t'other side it blows a hurricane."

Denys said nothing.

"He is gone to fetch the band."

"The band! what band?"

"Those who will cut your throat and take your gold. Wretched man; to go and shake gold in an innkeeper's face!"

The blow came so unexpectedly it staggered even Denys, accustomed as he was to sudden perils. He muttered a single word, but in it a volume.

"Gerard!"

"Gerard! What is that? Oh, 'tis thy comrade's name, poor lad. Get him out quick ere they come; and fly to the next town."

"And thou?"

"They will kill me."

"That shall they not. Fly with us."

"'Twill avail me nought; one of the band will be sent to kill me. They are sworn to slay all who betray them."

"I'll take thee to my native place full thirty leagues from hence, and put thee under my own mother's wing, ere they shall hurt a hair o' thy head. But first Gerard. Stay thou here whilst I fetch him!"

As he was darting off, the girl seized him convulsively, and with all the iron strength excitement lends to women. "Stay me not! for pity's sake," he cried; "'tis life or death."

"Sh!--sh!" whispered the girl, shutting his mouth hard with her hand, and putting her pale lips close to him, and her eyes, that seemed to turn backwards, straining towards some indistinct sound.

He listened.

He heard footsteps, many footsteps: and no voices. She whispered in his ear "They are come."

And trembled like a leaf.

Denys felt it was so. Travellers in that number would never have come in dead silence.

The feet were now at the very door.

"How many?" said he in a hollow whisper.

"Hush!" and she put her mouth to his very ear.

And who, that had seen this man and woman in that attitude, would have guessed what freezing hearts were theirs, and what terrible whispers passed between them?

"Seven."

"How armed?"

"Sword and dagger: and the giant with his axe. They call him the Abbot."

"And my comrade?"

"Nothing can save him. Better lose one life than two. Fly!"

Denys's blood froze at this cynical advice. "Poor creature, you know not a soldier's heart."

He put his head in his hands a moment, and a hundred thoughts of dangers baffled whirled through his brain.

"Listen, girl! There is one chance for our lives, if thou wilt but be true to us. Run to the town; to the nearest tavern, and tell the first soldier there, that a soldier here is sore beset, but armed, and his life to be saved if they will but run. Then to the bailiff. But first to the soldiers. Nay, not a word, but buss me, good lass, and fly! men's lives hang on thy heels."

She kilted up her gown to run. He came round to the road with her; saw her cross the road cringing with fear, then glide away, then turn into an erect shadow, then melt away in the storm.

And now he must get to Gerard. But how? He had to run the gauntlet of the whole band. He asked himself, what was the worst thing they could do? for he had learned in war that an enemy does, not what you hope he will do, but what you hope he will not do. "Attack me as I enter the kitchen! Then I must not give them time."

Just as he drew near to the latch, a terrible thought crossed him. "Suppose they had already dealt with Gerard. Why, then," thought he, "nought is left but to kill, and be killed;" and he strung his bow, and walked rapidly into the kitchen. There were seven hideous faces seated round the fire, and the landlord pouring them out neat brandy, blood's forerunner in every age.

"What? company!" cried Denys, gaily: "one minute, my lads, and I'll be with you;" and he snatched up a lighted candle off the table, opened the door that led to the staircase, and went up it hallooing. "What, Gerard! whither hast thou skulked to?" There was no answer. He hallooed louder, "Gerard, where art thou?"

After a moment in which Denys lived an hour of agony, a peevish half-inarticulate noise issued from the room at the head of the little stairs. Denys burst in, and there was Gerard asleep.

"Thank God!" he said, in a choking voice, then began to sing loud, untuneful ditties. Gerard put his fingers into his ears; but presently he saw in Denys's face a horror that contrasted strangely with this sudden merriment.

"What ails thee?" said he, sitting up and staring.

"Hush!" said Denys, and his hand spoke even more plainly than his lips. "Listen to me."

Denys then pointing significantly to the door, to show Gerard sharp ears were listening hard by, continued his song aloud, but under cover of it threw in short muttered syllables.

"(Our lives are in peril.)

"(Thieves.)

"(Thy doublet.)

"(Thy sword.)

"Aid.

"Coming.

"Put off time." Then aloud.

"Well, now, wilt have t'other bottle? say Nay."

"No, not I."

"But I tell thee, there are half a dozen jolly fellows. Tired."

"Ay, but I am too wearied," said Gerard. "Go thou."

"Nay, nay!" Then he went to the door and called out cheerfully, "Landlord, the young milksop will not rise. Give those honest fellows t'other bottle. I will pay for't in the morning."

He heard a brutal and fierce chuckle.

Having thus by observation made sure the kitchen door was shut, and the miscreants were not actually listening, he examined the chamber door closely: then quietly shut it, but did not bolt it: and went and inspected the window.

It was too small to get out of, and yet a thick bar of iron had been let in the stone to make it smaller; and, just as he made this chilling discovery, the outer door of the house was bolted with a loud clang.

Denys groaned, "The beasts are in the shambles."

* * * * *

But would the thieves attack them while they were awake? Probably not.

Not to throw away this their best chance the poor souls now made a series of desperate efforts to converse, as if discussing ordinary matters; and by this means Gerard learned all that had passed, and that the girl was gone for aid.

"Pray Heaven, she may not lose heart by the way," said Denys, sorrowfully.

And Denys begged Gerard's forgiveness for bringing him out of his way for this.

Gerard forgave him.

"I would fear them less, Gerard, but for one they call the Abbot. I picked him out at once. Taller than you, bigger than us both put together. Fights with an axe. Gerard, a man to lead a herd of deer to battle. I shall kill that man to-night, or he will kill me. I think somehow 'tis he will kill me."

"Saints forbid! Shoot him at the door! What avails his strength against your weapon?"

"I shall pick him out: but, if it comes to hand fighting, run swiftly under his guard, or you are a dead man. I tell thee neither of us may stand a blow of that axe: thou never sawest such a body of a man."

Gerard was for bolting the door; but Denys with a sigh showed him that half the door-post turned outward on a hinge, and the great bolt was little more than a blind. "I have forborne to bolt it," said he, "that they may think us the less suspicious."

Near an hour rolled away thus. It seemed an age. Yet it was but a little hour: and the town was a league distant. And some of the voices in the kitchen became angry and impatient.

"They will not wait much longer," said Denys, "and we have no chance at all unless we surprise them."

"I will do whate'er you bid," said Gerard meekly.

There was a cupboard on the same side as the door; but between it and the window. It reached nearly to the ground, but not quite. Denys opened the cupboard door and placed Gerard on a chair behind it. "If they run for the bed, strike at the napes of their necks! a sword cut there always kills or disables." He then arranged the bolsters and their shoes in the bed so as to deceive a person peeping from a distance, and drew the short curtains at the head.

Meantime Gerard was on his knees. Denys looked round and saw him.

"Ah!" said Denys, "above all pray them to forgive me for bringing you into this guetapens!"

And now they grasped hands and looked in one another's eyes; oh, such a look! Denys's hand was cold, and Gerard's warm.

They took their posts.

Denys blew out the candle.

"We must keep silence now."

But in the terrible tension of their nerves and very souls they found they could hear a whisper fainter than any man could catch at all outside that door. They could hear each other's heart thump at times.

"Good news!" breathed Denys, listening at the door.

"They are casting lots."

* * * * *

"Pray that it may be the Abbot."

"Yes. Why?"

"If he comes alone I can make sure of him."

* * * * *

"Denys!"

"Ay!"

"I fear I shall go mad, if they do not come soon."

"Shall I feign sleep? Shall I snore?"

"Will that--?"

"Perhaps."

"Do then, and God have mercy on us!"

Denys snored at intervals.

There was a scuffling of feet heard in the kitchen, and then all was still.

Denys snored again. Then took up his position behind the door.

But he, or they, who had drawn the lot, seemed determined to run no foolish risks. Nothing was attempted in a hurry.

When they were almost starved with cold, and waiting for the attack, the door on the stairs opened softly and closed again. Nothing more.

There was another harrowing silence.

Then a single light footstep on the stair; and nothing more.

Then a light crept under the door; and nothing more.

* * * * *

Presently there was a gentle scratching, not half so loud as a mouse's, and the false door-post opened by degrees and left a perpendicular space through which the light streamed in. The door, had it been bolted, would now have hung by the bare tip of the bolt, which went into the real door-post, but, as it was, it swung gently open of itself. It opened inwards, so Denys did not raise his crossbow from the ground, but merely grasped his dagger.

The candle was held up, and shaded from behind by a man's hand.

He was inspecting the beds from the threshold, satisfied that his victims were both in bed.

The man glided into the apartment. But at the first step something in the position of the cupboard and chair made him uneasy. He ventured no further, but put the candle on the floor and stooped to peer under the chair; but, as he stooped, an iron hand grasped his shoulder, and a dagger was driven so fiercely through his neck that the point came out at his gullet. There was a terrible hiccough, but no cry; and half a dozen silent strokes followed in swift succession, each a death-blow, and the assassin was laid noiselessly on the floor.

Denys closed the door; bolted it gently; drew the post to, and even while he was doing it whispered Gerard to bring a chair. It was done.

"Help me set him up."

"Dead?"

"Parbleu."

"What for?"

"Frighten them! Gain time."

Even while saying this, Denys had whipped a piece of string round the dead man's neck, and tied him to the chair, and there the ghastly figure sat fronting the door.

* * * * *

"Denys, I can do better. Saints forgive me!"

"What? Be quick then, we have not many moments."

And Denys got his cross-bow ready, and, tearing off his straw mattress, reared it before him and prepared to shoot the moment the door should open, for he had no hope any more would come singly, when they found the first did not return.

While thus employed, Gerard was busy about the seated corpse, and, to his amazement, Denys saw a luminous glow spreading rapidly over the white face.

Gerard blew out the candle. And on this the corpse's face shone still more like a glowworm's head.

Denys shook in his shoes, and his teeth chattered.

"What in Heaven's name is this?" he whispered.

"Hush! 'tis but phosphorus. But 'twill serve."

"Away! they will surprise thee."

In fact uneasy mutterings were heard below, and at last a deep voice said, "What makes him so long? is the drôle rifling them?"

It was their comrade they suspected then, not the enemy. Soon a step came softly but rapidly up the stairs: the door was gently tried.

When this resisted, which was clearly not expected, the sham post was very cautiously moved, and an eye no doubt peeped through the aperture: for there was a howl of dismay, and the man was heard to stumble back and burst into the kitchen, where a babel of voices rose directly on his return.

Gerard ran to the dead thief and began to work on him again.

"Back, madman!" whispered Denys.

"Nay, nay. I know these ignorant brutes. They will not venture here awhile. I can make him ten times more fearful."

"At least close that opening! Let them not see you at your devilish work."

Gerard closed the sham post, and in half a minute his brush made the dead head a sight to strike any man with dismay. He put his art to a strange use, and one unparalleled perhaps in the history of mankind. He illuminated his dead enemy's face to frighten his living foe: the staring eyeballs he made globes of fire; the teeth he left white, for so they were more terrible by the contrast, but the palate and tongue he tipped with fire, and made one lurid cavern of the red depths the chap-fallen jaw revealed: and on the brow he wrote in burning letters "LA MORT." And, while he was doing it, the stout Denys was quaking, and fearing the vengeance of Heaven; for one man's courage is not another's; and the band of miscreants below were quarrelling and disputing loudly, and now without disguise.

The steps that led down to the kitchen were fifteen, but they were nearly perpendicular: there was therefore in point of fact no distance between the besiegers and besieged, and the latter now caught almost every word. At last one was heard to cry out "I tell ye the devil has got him and branded him with hell-fire. I am more like to leave this cursed house than go again into a room that is full of fiends."

"Art drunk? or mad? or a coward?" said another.

"Call me a coward, I'll give thee my dagger's point, and send thee where Pierre sits o' fire for ever."

"Come, no quarrelling when work is afoot," roared a tremendous diapason, "or I'll brain ye both with my fist, and send ye where we shall all go soon or late."

"The Abbot," whispered Denys, gravely.

He felt the voice he had just heard could belong to no man but the colossus he had seen in passing through the kitchen. It made the place vibrate. The quarrelling continued some time, and then there was a dead silence.

"Look out, Gerard."

"Ay. What will they do next?"

"We shall soon know."

* * * * *

"Shall I wait for you, or cut down the first that opens the door?"

"Wait for me, lest we strike the same and waste a blow. Alas! we cannot afford that."

* * * * *

Dead silence.

* * * * *

Sudden came into the room a thing that made them start and their hearts quiver.

And what was it? A moonbeam.

Even so can this machine, the body, by the soul's action be strung up to start and quiver. The sudden ray shot keen and pure into that shamble.

Its calm, cold, silvery soul traversed the apartment in a stream of no great volume; for the window was narrow.

After the first tremor Gerard whispered, "Courage, Denys! God's eye is on us even here." And he fell upon his knees with his face turned towards the window.

Ay it was like a holy eye opening suddenly on human crime and human passions. Many a scene of blood and crime that pure cold eye has rested on; but on few more ghastly than this, where two men, with a lighted corpse between them, waited panting, to kill or be killed. Nor did the moonlight deaden that horrible corpse-light. If anything it added to its ghastliness: for the body sat at the edge of the moonbeam, which cut sharp across the shoulder and the ear, and seemed blue and ghastly and unnatural by the side of that lurid glow in which the face and eyes and teeth shone horribly. But Denys dared not look that way.

The moon drew a broad stripe of light across the door, and on that his eyes were glued. Presently he whispered, "Gerard!"

Gerard looked and raised his sword.

Acutely as they had listened they had heard of late no sound on the stair. Yet there--on the door-post, at the edge of the stream of moonlight, were the tips of the fingers of a hand.

The nails glistened.

* * * * *

Presently they began to crawl, and crawl, down towards the bolt, but with infinite slowness and caution. In so doing they crept into the moonlight. The actual motion was imperceptible, but slowly, slowly, the fingers came out whiter and whiter: but the hand between the main knuckles and the wrist remained dark. Denys slowly raised his crossbow.

He levelled it. He took a long steady aim.

Gerard palpitated. At last the crossbow twanged. The hand was instantly nailed, with a stern jar, to the quivering doorpost. There was a scream of anguish. "Cut," whispered Denys eagerly, and Gerard's uplifted sword descended and severed the wrist with two swift blows. A body sank down moaning outside.

The hand remained inside, immovable, with blood trickling from it down the wall. The fierce bolt slightly barbed had gone through it, and deep into the real door-post.

"Two," said Denys, with terrible cynicism.

He strung his crossbow, and kneeled behind his cover again.

"The next will be the Abbot."

The wounded man moved, and presently crawled down to his companions on the stairs, and the kitchen door was shut.

There nothing was heard now but low muttering. The last incident had revealed the mortal character of the weapons used by the besieged.

"I begin to think the Abbot's stomach is not so great as his body," said Denys.

The words were scarcely out of his mouth, when the following events happened all in a couple of seconds. The kitchen door was opened roughly, a heavy but active man darted up the steps without any manner of disguise, and a single ponderous blow sent the door not only off its hinges, but right across the room on to Denys's fortification, which it struck so rudely as nearly to lay him flat. And in the doorway stood a colossus with a glittering axe.

He saw the dead man with the moon's blue light on half his face, and the red light on the other half and inside his chapfallen jaws: he stared, his arms fell, his knees knocked together, and he crouched with terror.

"LA MORT!" he cried in tones of terror, and turned and fled. In which act Denys started up and shot him through both jaws. He sprang with one bound into the kitchen, and there leaned on his axe, spitting blood and teeth and curses.

Denys strung his bow and put his hand into his breast.

He drew it out dismayed.

"My last bolt is gone," he groaned.

"But we have our swords, and you have slain the giant."

"No, Gerard," said Denys gravely: "I have not. And the worst is I have wounded him. Fool! to shoot at a retreating lion. He had never faced thy handiwork again, but for my meddling."

"Ha! to your guard! I hear them open the door."

Then Denys, depressed by the one error he had committed in all this fearful night, felt convinced his last hour had come. He drew his sword, but like one doomed. But what is this? a red light flickers on the ceiling. Gerard flew to the window and looked out. There were men with torches, and breastplates gleaming red. "We are saved! Armed men!" And he dashed his sword through the window shouting "Quick! quick! we are sore pressed."

"Back!" yelled Denys; "they come! strike none but him!"

That very moment the Abbot and two men with naked weapons rushed into the room. Even as they came, the outer door was hammered fiercely, and the Abbot's comrades hearing it, and seeing the torchlight, turned and fled. Not so the terrible Abbot: wild with rage and pain, he spurned his dead comrade, chair and all, across the room, then, as the men faced him on each side with kindling eyeballs, he waved his tremendous axe like a feather right and left, and cleared a space, then lifted it to hew them both in pieces.

His antagonists were inferior in strength, but not in swiftness and daring, and above all they had settled how to attack him. The moment he reared his axe, they flew at him like cats, and both together. If he struck a full blow with his weapon he would most likely kill one, but the other would certainly kill him: he saw this, and intelligent as well as powerful, he thrust the handle fiercely in Denys's face, and, turning, jabbed with the steel at Gerard. Denys went staggering back covered with blood. Gerard had rushed in like lightning, and, just as the axe turned to descend on him, drove his sword so fiercely through the giant's body, that the very hilt sounded on his ribs like the blow of a pugilist, and Denys, staggering back to help his friend, saw a steel point come out of the Abbot behind.

The stricken giant bellowed like a bull, dropped his axe, and clutching Gerard's throat tremendously, shook him like a child. Then Denys with a fierce snarl drove his sword into the giant's back. "Stand firm now!" and he pushed the cold steel through and through the giant and out at his breast.

Thus horribly spitted on both sides, the Abbot, gave a violent shudder, and his heels hammered the ground convulsively. His lips, fast turning blue, opened wide and deep, and he cried "LA MORT!--LA MORT!--LA MORT!!" The first time in a roar of despair, and then twice in a horror-stricken whisper never to be forgotten.

Just then the street door was forced.

Suddenly the Abbot's arms whirled like windmills, and his huge body wrenched wildly and carried them to the doorway, twisting their wrists and nearly throwing them off their legs.

"He'll win clear yet," cried Denys: "out steel! and in again!"

They tore out their smoking swords, but, ere they could stab again, the Abbot leaped full five feet high, and fell with a tremendous crash against the door below, carrying it away with him like a sheet of paper, and through the aperture the glare of torches burst on the awe struck faces above, half blinding them.

* * * * *

The thieves at the first alarm had made for the back door, but driven thence by a strong guard ran back to the kitchen, just in time to see the lock forced out of the socket, and half a dozen mailed archers burst in upon them. On these in pure despair they drew their swords.

But ere a blow was struck on either side, the staircase door behind them was battered into their midst with one ponderous blow, and with it the Abbot's body came flying, hurled, as they thought by no mortal hand, and rolled on the floor spouting blood from back and bosom in two furious jets, and quivered, but breathed no more.

The thieves smitten with dismay fell on their knees directly, and the archers bound them, while, above, the rescued ones still stood like statues rooted to the spot, their dripping swords extended in the red torchlight, expecting their indomitable enemy to leap back on them as wonderfully as he had gone.

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Chapter XXXIV

"WHERE be the true men?"

"Here be we. God bless you all! God bless you!"

There was a rush to the stairs, and half a dozen hard but friendly hands were held out and grasped them warmly. "Y'have saved our lives, lads," cried Denys, "y'have saved our lives this night."

A wild sight met the eyes of the rescued pair. The room flaring with torches, the glittering breastplates of the archers, their bronzed faces, the white cheeks of the bound thieves, and the bleeding giant, whose dead body these hard men left lying there in its own gore.

Gerard went round the archers and took them each by the hand with glistening eyes, and on this they all kissed him; and this time he kissed them in return. Then he said to one handsome archer of his own age, "Prithee, good soldier, have an eye to me. A strange drowsiness overcomes me. Let no one cut my throat while I sleep--for pity's sake."

The archer promised with a laugh; for he thought Gerard was jesting: and the latter went off into a deep sleep almost immediately.

Denys was surprised at this: but did not interfere; for it suited his immediate purpose. A couple of archers were inspecting the Abbot's body, turning it half over with their feet, and inquiring, "Which of the two had flung this enormous rogue down from an upper story like that; they would fain have the trick of his arm."

Denys at first pished and pshawed, but he dared not play the braggart, for he said to himself "That young vagabond will break in and say 'twas the finger of Heaven, and no mortal arm, or some such stuff, and make me look like a fool." But now, seeing Gerard unconscious, he suddenly gave this required information:

"Well, then, you see, comrades, I had run my sword through this one up to the hilt; and one or two more of 'em came buzzing about me; so it behoved me have my sword or die: so I just put my foot against his stomach, gave a tug with my hand and a spring with my foot, and sent him flying to kingdom come! He died in the air, and his carrion rolled in amongst you without ceremony: made you jump I warrant me. But pikestaves and pillage! what avails prattling of these trifles once they are gone by? buvons, camarades, buvons."

The archers remarked that it was easy to say "buvons" where no liquor was, but not so easy to do it.

"Nay, I'll soon find ye liquor. My nose hath a natural alacrity at scenting out the wine. You follow me: and I my nose: bring a torch!" And they left the room, and, finding a short flight of stone steps, descended them and entered a large, low, damp cellar.

It smelt close and dank: and the walls were encrusted here and there with what seemed cobwebs; but proved to be saltpetre that had oozed out of the damp stones, and crystallized.

"Oh! the fine mouldy smell," said Denys. "In such placen still lurks the good wine: advance thy torch. Diable! what is that in the corner? A pile of rags? No: 'tis a man."

They gathered round with the torch, and lo! a figure crouched on a heap in the corner, pale as ashes and shivering.

"Why, it is the landlord," said Denys.

"Get up, thou craven heart!" shouted one of the archers.

"Why, man, the thieves are bound, and we are dry, that bound them. Up! and show us thy wine; for no bottles see I here."

"What, be the rascals bound?" stammered the pale landlord; "good news. W--w--wine? that will I, honest sirs."

And he rose with unsure joints and offered to lead the way to the wine cellar. But Denys interposed. "You are all in the dark, comrades. He is in league with the thieves."

"Alack, good soldier, me in league with the accursed robbers! Is that reasonable?"

"The girl said so any way."

"The girl! What girl? Ah! Curse her, traitress!"

"Well," interposed the other archer; "the girl is not here, but gone on to the bailiff. So let the burghers settle whether this craven be guilty or no: for we caught him not in the act: and let him draw us our wine."

"One moment," said Denys, shrewdly. "Why cursed he the girl? If he be a true man, he should bless her as we do."

"Alas, sir!" said the landlord, "I have but my good name to live by, and I cursed her to you, because you said she had belied me."

"Humph! I trow thou art a thief, and where is the thief that cannot lie with a smooth face? Therefore hold him, comrades: a prisoner can draw wine an if his hands be not bound."

The landlord offered no objection; but on the contrary said he would with pleasure show them where his little stock of wine was, but hoped they would pay for what they should drink, for his rent was due this two months.

The archers smiled grimly at his simplicity as they thought it; one of them laid a hand quietly but firmly on his shoulder, the other led on with the torch.

They had reached the threshold when Denys cried "Halt!"

"What is't?"

"Here be bottles in this corner; advance thy light."

The torch-bearer went towards him. He had just taken off his scabbard and was probing the heap the landlord had just been crouched upon.

"Nay, nay," cried the landlord, "the wine is in the next cellar. There is nothing there."

"Nothing is mighty hard, then," said Denys, and drew out something with his hand from the heap.

It proved to be only a bone.

Denys threw it on the floor: it rattled.

"There is nought there but the bones of the house," said the landlord.

"Just now 'twas nothing. Now that we have found something 'tis nothing but bones. Here's another. Humph? look at this one, comrade; and you come too and look at it, and bring yon smooth knave along."

The archer with the torch, whose name was Philippe, held the bone to the light and turned it round and round.

"Well?" said Denys.

"Well, if this was a field of battle I should say 'twas the shank-bone of a man! no more, no less. But 'tisn't a battle field, nor a churchyard; 'tis an inn."

"True, mate: but yon knave's ashy face is as good a light to me as a field of battle. I read the bone by it. Bring yon face nearer, I say. When the chine is amissing, and the house dog can't look at you without his tail creeping between his legs, who was the thief? Good brothers mine, my mind it doth misgive me. The deeper I thrust the more there be. Mayhap if these bones could tell their tale they would make true men's flesh creep that heard it."

"Alas! young man, what hideous fancies are these! The bones are bones of beeves, and sheep, and kids, and not, as you think, of men and women. Holy saints preserve us!"

"Hold thy peace! thy words are air. Thou hast not got burghers by the ear, that know not a veal knuckle from their grandsire's ribs; but soldiers--men that have gone to look for their dear comrades, and found their bones picked as clean by the crows, as these I doubt have been by thee and thy mates. Men and women, saidst thou? And prithee, when spake I a word of women's bones? Wouldst make a child suspect thee. Field of battle, comrade! Was not this house a field of battle half an hour agone? Drag him close to me, let me read his face; now then, what is this, thou knave?" and he thrust a small object suddenly in his face.

"Alas! I know not."

"Well, I would not swear neither: but it is too like the thumb bone of a man's hand; mates, my flesh it creeps. Churchyard! how know I this is not one?"

And he now drew his sword out of the scabbard and began to rake the heap of earth and broken crockery and bones out on the floor.

The landlord assured him he but wasted his time. "We poor innkeepers are sinners," said he, "we give short measure and baptize the wine; we are fain to do these things; the laws are so unjust to us; but we are not assassins. How could we afford to kill our customers? May Heaven's lightning strike me dead if there be any bones there but such as have been used for meat. 'Tis the kitchen wench flings them here; I swear by God's holy mother, by holy Paul, by holy Dominic, and Denys my patron saint----ah!"

Denys held out a bone under his eye in dead silence. It was a bone no man however ignorant, however lying, could confound with those of sheep or oxen. The sight of it shut the lying lips, and palsied the heartless heart.

The landlord's hair rose visibly on his head like spikes, and his knees gave way as if his limbs had been struck from under him. But the archers dragged him fiercely up, and kept him erect under the torch staring fascinated at the dead skull which, white as the living cheek opposed, but no whiter, glared back again at its murderer, whose pale lips now opened, and opened, but could utter no sound.

"Ah!" said Denys, solemnly, and trembling now with rage, "look on the sockets out of which thou hast picked the eyes, and let them blast thine eyes, that crows shall pick out ere this week shall end. Now, hold thou that while I search on. Hold it, I say, or here I rob the gallows--" and he threatened the quaking wretch with his naked sword, till with a groan he took the skull and held it, almost fainting.

Oh! that every murderer, and contriver of murder, could see him, sick, and staggering with terror, and with his hair on end holding the cold skull, and feeling that his own head would soon be like it. And soon the heap was scattered, and, alas! not one nor two, but many skulls were brought to light, the culprit moaning at each discovery.

Suddenly Denys uttered a strange cry of distress to come from so bold and hard a man; and held up to the torch a mass of human hair. It was long, glossy, and golden. A woman's beautiful hair. At sight of it the archers instinctively shook the craven wretch in their hands: and he whined.

"I have a little sister with hair just so fair and shining as this," gulped Denys. "Jesu! if it should be hers! There quick, take my sword and dagger, and keep them from my hand, lest I strike him dead and wrong the gibbet. And thou, poor innocent victim, on whose head this most lovely hair did grow, hear me swear thus, on bended knee, never to leave this man till I see him broken to pieces on the wheel even for thy sake."

He rose from his knee. "Ay, had he as many lives as here be hairs, I'd have them all, by God." And he put the hair into his bosom. Then in a sudden fury seized the landlord fiercely by the neck, and forced him to his knees; and foot on head ground his face savagely among the bones of his victims, where they lay thickest: and the assassin first yelled, then whined and whimpered, just as a dog first yells, then whines, when his nose is so forced into some leveret or other innocent he has killed.

"Now lend me thy bowstring, Philippe!" He passed it through the eyes of a skull alternately, and hung the ghastly relic of mortality and crime round the man's neck; then pulled him up and kicked him industriously into the kitchen, where one of the aldermen of the burgh had arrived with constables, and was even now taking an archer's deposition.

The grave burgher was much startled at sight of the landlord driven in bleeding from a dozen scratches inflicted by the bones of his own victims, and carrying his horrible collar. But Denys came panting after, and in a few fiery words soon made all clear.

"Bind him like the rest," said the alderman sternly. "I count him the blackest of them all."

While his hands were being bound, the poor wretch begged piteously that "the skull might be taken from him."

"Humph!" said the alderman. "Certes I had not ordered such a thing to be put on mortal man. Yet being there I will not lift voice nor finger to doff it. Methinks it fits thee truly, thou bloody dog. 'Tis thy ensign, and hangs well above a heart so foul as thine."

He then inquired of Denys if he thought they had secured the whole gang or but a part.

"Your worship," said Denys, "there are but seven of them, and this landlord. One we slew upstairs, one we tumbled down dead, the rest are bound before you."

"Good! go fetch the dead one from upstairs, and lay him beside him I caused to be removed."

Here a voice like a guinea-fowl's broke peevishly in. "Now, now, now, where is the hand? that is what I want to see." The speaker was a little pettifogging clerk.

"You will find it above, nailed to the door-post by a cross-bow bolt."

"Good!" said the clerk. He whispered his master, "What a godly show will the 'pièces de conviction' make!" and with this he wrote them down, enumerating them in separate squeaks as he penned them. Skulls,--Bones,--A woman's hair,--A thief's hand,--1 axe--2 carcases,--1 cross-bow bolt. This done he itched to search the cellar himself: there might be other invaluable morsels of evidence, an ear, or even an earring. The alderman assenting he caught up a torch and was hurrying thither, when an accident stopped him, and indeed carried him a step or two in the opposite direction.

The constables had gone up the stair in single file.

But the head constable no sooner saw the phosphorescent corpse seated by the bedside, than he stood stupefied: and next he began to shake like one in an ague, and, terror gaining on him more and more, he uttered a sort of howl and recoiled swiftly. Forgetting the steps, in his recoil, he tumbled over backward on his nearest companion: but he, shaken by the shout of dismay, and catching a glimpse of something horrid, was already staggering back, and in no condition to sustain the head constable, who, like most head constables was a ponderous man. The two carried away the third, and the three the fourth, and they streamed into the kitchen, and settled on the floor, overlapping each other like a sequence laid out on a card-table. The clerk coming hastily with his torch ran an involuntary tilt again the fourth man, who, sharing the momentum of the mass, knocked him instantly on his back, the ace of that fair quint: and there he lay kicking and waving his torch, apparently in triumph, but really in convulsion; sense and wind being driven out together by the concussion.

"What is to do now, in Heaven's name?" cried the alderman, starting up with considerable alarm. But Denys explained, and offered to accompany his worship. "So be it," said the latter. His men picked themselves ruefully up, and the alderman put himself at their head and examined the premises above and below. As for the prisoners, their interrogatory was postponed till they could be confronted with the servant.

Before dawn, the thieves, alive and dead, and all the relics and evidences of crime and retribution, were swept away into the law's net, and the inn was silent and almost deserted. There remained but one constable, and Denys and Gerard, the latter still sleeping heavily.

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Chapter XXXV

GERARD awoke, and found Denys watching him with some anxiety.

"It is you for sleeping! Why, 'tis high noon."

"It was a blessed sleep," said Gerard, "methinks Heaven sent it me. It hath put as it were a veil between me and that awful night. To think that you and I sit here alive and well. How terrible a dream I seem to have had!"

"Ay, lad, that is the wise way to look at these things, when once they are past, why they are dreams, shadows. Break thy fast, and then thou wilt think no more on't. Moreover I promised to bring thee on to the town by noon, and take thee to his worship."

"What for?"

"He would put questions to thee; by the same when he was for waking thee to that end, but I withstood him earnestly, and vowed to bring thee to him in the morning."

"Thou shalt not break troth for me."

Gerard then sopped some rye bread in red wine and ate it to break his fast: then went with Denys over the scene of combat, and came back shuddering, and finally took the road with his friend, and kept peering through the hedges and expecting sudden attacks unreasonably, till they reached the little town. Denys took him to "The White Hart."

"No fear of cut-throats here," said he. "I know the landlord this many a year. He is a burgess, and looks to be bailiff. 'Tis here I was making for yestreen. But we lost time, and night overtook us--and--"

"And you saw a woman at the door, and would be wiser than la Jeanneton; she told us they were nought."

"Why, what saved our lives if not a woman? Ay, and risked her own to do it."

"That is true, Denys, and though women are nothing to me, I long to thank this poor girl, and reward her, ay though I share every doit in my purse with her. Do not you?"

"Parbleu."

"Where shall we find her?"

"Mayhap the alderman will tell us. We must go to him first."

The alderman received them with the most singular and inexplicable expression of countenance. However, after a moment's reflection, he wore a grim smile, and finally proceeded to put interrogatories to Gerard, and took down the answers. This done he told them that they must stay in the town until the thieves were tried, and be at hand to give evidence, on peril of fine and imprisonment. They looked very blank at this.

"However," said he, "'twill not be long, the culprits having been taken red handed." He added, "and you know in any case you could not leave the place this week."

Denys stared at this remark, and Gerard smiled at what he thought the simplicity of the old gentleman in dreaming that a provincial town of Burgundy had attraction to detain him from Rome and Margaret.

He now went to that which was nearest both their hearts. "Your worship," said he, "we cannot find our benefactress in the town."

"Nay, but who is your benefactress?"

"Who? why the good girl that came to you by night and saved our lives at peril of her own. Oh sir, our hearts burn within us to thank and bless her: where is she?"

"Oh, she is in prison."

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Chapter XXXVI

"IN prison, sir; good lack, for what misdeed?"

"Well, she is a witness, and may be a necessary one."

"Why, Messire Bailiff," put in Denys, "you lay not all your witnesses by the heels I trow."

The alderman, pleased at being called bailiff, became communicative. "In a case of blood we detain all testimony that is like to give us leg bail, and so defeat Justice, and that is why we still keep the womenfolk. For a man at odd times bides a week in one mind, but a woman, if she do her duty to the realm o' Friday, she shall undo it afore Sunday, or try. Could you see yon wench now, you should find her a blubbering at having betrayed five males to the gallows. Had they been females, we might have trusted to a subpœna. For they despise one another. And there they show some sense. But now I think on't, there were other reasons for laying this one by the heels. Hand me those depositions, young sir." And he put on his glasses. "Ay! she was implicated: she was one of the band."

A loud disclaimer burst from Denys and Gerard at once.

"No need to deave me," said the alderman. "Here 'tis in black and white. 'Jean Hardy (that is one of the thieves), being questioned confessed that,'--humph? Ay, here 'tis. 'And that the girl Manon was the decoy, and her sweetheart was Georges Vipont, one of the band; and hanged last month: and that she had been deject ever since, and had openly blamed the band for his death, saying, if they had not been rank cowards, he had never been taken, and it is his opinion she did but betray them out of very spite, and--'"

"His opinion," cried Gerard indignantly, "what signifies the opinion of a cut-throat, burning to be revenged on her who has delivered him to justice? And an you go to that what avails his testimony? Is a thief never a liar? Is he not aye a liar? and here a motive to lie? Revenge, why 'tis the strongest of all the passions. And oh, sir, what madness to question a detected felon and listen to him lying away an honest life--as if he were a true man swearing in open day, with his true hand on the Gospel laid!"

"Young man," said the alderman, "restrain thy heat in presence of authority! I find by your tongue you are a stranger. Know then that in this land we question all the world. We are not so weak as to hope to get at the truth by shutting either our left ear or our right."

"And so you would listen to Satan belying the saints!"

"Ta! ta! The law meddles but with men and women, and these cannot utter a story all lies, let them try ever so. Wherefore we shut not the barn-door (as the saying is) against any man's grain. Only having taken it in we do winnow and sift it. And who told you I had swallowed the thief's story whole like fair water? Not so. I did but credit so much on't as was borne out by better proof."

"Better proof?" and Gerard looked blank. "Why who but the thieves would breathe a word against her?"

"Marry, herself."

"Herself, sir? what did you question her too?"

"I tell you we question all the world. Here is her deposition, can you read?--Read it yourself then."

Gerard looked at Denys and read him

MANON'S DEPOSITION

"I am a native of Epinal. I left my native place two years ago because I was unfortunate: I could not like the man they bade me. So my father beat me. I ran away from my father. I went to service. I left service because the mistress was jealous of me. The reason they gave for turning me off was, because I was saucy. Last year I stood in the market-place to be hired with other girls. The landlord of 'The Fair Star' hired me. I was eleven months with him. A young man courted me. I loved him. I found out that travellers came and never went away again. I told my lover. He bade me hold my peace. He threatened me. I found my lover was one of a band of thieves. When travellers were to be robbed the landlord went out and told the band to come. Then I wept and prayed for the travellers' souls. I never told. A month ago my lover died.

"The soldier put me in mind of my lover. He was bearded like him I had lost. I cannot tell whether I should have interfered, if he had had no beard. I am sorry I told now."

The paper almost dropped from Gerard's hands. Now for the first time he saw that Manon's life was in mortal danger. He knew the dogged law, and the dogged men that executed it. He threw himself suddenly on his knees at the alderman's feet. "Oh, sir! think of the difference between those cruel men and this poor weak woman! Could you have the heart to send her to the same death with them; could you have the heart to condemn us to look on and see her slaughtered, who, but that she risked her life for ours, had not now been in jeopardy? Alas, sir! show me and my comrade some pity, if you have none for her, poor soul. Denys and I be true men, and you will rend our hearts if you kill that poor simple girl. What can we do? What is left for us to do then but cut our throats at her gallow's foot?"

The alderman was tough but mortal; the prayers and agitation of Gerard first astounded, then touched him. He showed it in a curious way. He became peevish and fretful. "There get up, do," said he. "I doubt whether anybody would say as many words for me. What ho, Daniel! go fetch the town clerk." And, on that functionary entering from an adjoining room, "Here is a foolish lad fretting about yon girl. Can we stretch a point? say we admit her to bear witness, and question her favorably."

The town clerk was one of your "impossibility" men.

"Nay, sir, we cannot do that: she was not concerned in this business. Had she been accessory, we might have offered her a pardon to bear witness."

Gerard burst in. "But she did better. Instead of being accessory, she stayed the crime; and she proffered herself as witness by running hither with the tale."

"Tush, young man, 'tis a matter of law." The alderman and the clerk then had a long discussion, the one maintaining, the other denying, that she stood as fair in law, as if she had been accessory to the attempt on our travellers' lives. And this was lucky for Manon: for the alderman, irritated by the clerk reiterating that he could not do this and could not that, and could not do t'other, said "he would show him he could do anything he chose." And he had Manon out, and, upon the landlord of the "White Hart" being her bondsman, and Denys depositing five gold pieces with him, and the girl promising, not without some coaxing from Denys, to attend as a witness, he liberated her, but eased his conscience by telling her in his own terms his reason for this leniency.

"The town had to buy a new rope for everybody hanged, and present it to the bourreau, or else compound with him in money: and she was not in his opinion worth this municipal expense; whereas decided characters like her late confederates, were." And so Denys and Gerard carried her off, Gerard dancing round her for joy, Denys keeping up her heart by assuring her of the demise of a troublesome personage, and she weeping inauspiciously. However, on the road to the "White Hart" the public found her out, and having heard the whole story from the archers, who naturally told it warmly in her favour, followed her hurrahing and encouraging her, till finding herself backed by numbers she plucked up heart. The landlord too saw at a glance that her presence in the inn would draw custom, and received her politely and assigned her an upper chamber: here she buried herself, and being alone rained tears again.

Poor little mind, it was like a ripple, up and down, down and up, up and down. Bidding the landlord be very kind to her, and keep her a prisoner without letting her feel it, the friends went out: and lo! as they stepped into the street they saw two processions coming towards them from opposite sides. One was a large one attended with noise and howls and those indescribable cries, by which rude natures reveal at odd times that relationship to the beasts of the field and forest, which at other times we succeed in hiding. The other, very thinly attended by a few nuns and friars, came slow and silent.

The prisoners going to exposure in the market-place. The gathered bones of the victims coming to the churchyard.

And the two met in the narrow street nearly at the inn door, and could not pass each other for a long time, and the bier, that bore the relics of mortality, got wedged against the cart that carried the men, who had made those bones what they were, and in a few hours must die for it themselves. The mob had not the quick intelligence to be at once struck with this stern meeting: but at last a woman cried "Look at your work, ye dogs!" and the crowd took it like wildfire, and there was a horrible yell, and the culprits groaned and tried to hide their heads upon their bosoms, but could not, their hands being tied. And there they stood images of pale, hollow-eyed despair, and oh how they looked on the bier, and envied those whom they had sent before them on the dark road they were going upon themselves! And the two men who were the cause of both processions, stood and looked gravely on, and even Manon, hearing the disturbance, crept to the window, and, hiding her face, peeped trembling through her fingers as women will.

This strange meeting parted Denys and Gerard. The former yielded to curiosity and revenge, the latter doffed his bonnet, and piously followed the poor remains of those whose fate had so nearly been his own. For some time he was the one lay mourner: but when they had reached the suburbs, a long way from the greater attraction that was filling the market-place, more than one artisan threw down his tools, and more than one shopman left his shop, and touched with pity, or a sense of our common humanity, and perhaps decided somewhat by the example of Gerard, followed the bones bare headed, and saw them deposited with the prayers of the Church in hallowed ground.

After the funeral rites Gerard stepped respectfully up to the curé, and offered to buy a mass for their souls.

Gerard, son of Catherine, always looked at two sides of a penny: and he tried to purchase this mass a trifle under the usual terms, on account of the pitiable circumstances. But the good curé gently but adroitly parried his ingenuity, and blandly screwed him up to the market price.

In the course of the business they discovered a similarity of sentiments. Piety and worldly prudence are not very rare companions: still it is unusual to carry both so far as these two men did. Their collision in the prayer market led to mutual esteem, as when knight encountered knight worthy of his steel. Moreover the good curé loved a bit of gossip, and finding his customer was one of those who had fought the thieves at Domfront, would have him into his parlour and hear the whole from his own lips. And his heart warmed to Gerard and he said, "God was good to thee. I thank him for't, with all my soul. Thou art a good lad." He added drily, "shouldst have told me this tale in the churchyard. I doubt I had given thee the mass for love. However," said he (the thermometer suddenly falling) "'tis ill-luck to go back upon a bargain. But I'll broach a bottle of my old Medoc for thee: and few be the guests I would do that for." The curé went to his cupboard and, while he groped for the choice bottle, he muttered to himself, "At their old tricks again!"

"Plait-il?" said Gerard.

"I said nought. Ay, here 'tis."

"Nay, your reverence. You surely spoke: you said 'At their old tricks again!'"

"Said I so in sooth?" and his reverence smiled. He then proceeded to broach the wine, and filled a cup for each. Then he put a log of wood on the fire, for stoves were none in Burgundy. "And so I said 'At their old tricks!' did I? Come, sip the good wine, and, whilst it lasts, story for story, I care not if I tell you a little tale."

Gerard's eyes sparkled.

"Thou lovest a story?"

"As my life."

"Nay, but raise not thine expectations too high, neither. 'Tis but a foolish trifle compared with thine adventures."

THE CURÉ'S TALE

"Once upon a time, then, in the kingdom of France, and in the Duchy of Burgundy, and not a day's journey from the town, where now we sit a sipping of old Medoc, there lived--a curé. I say he lived; but barely. The parish was small, the parishioners greedy; and never gave their curé a doit more than he could compel. The nearer they brought him to a disembodied spirit by meagre diet, the holier should be his prayers in their behalf. I know not if this was their creed, but their practice gave it colour.

"At last he pickled a rod for them.

"One day the richest farmer in the place had twins to baptize. The curé was had to the christening dinner as usual; but, ere he would baptize the children, he demanded, not the christening fees only, but the burial fees. 'Saints defend us, parson,' cried the mother; 'talk not of burying! I did never see children liker to live.' 'Nor I,' said the curé, 'the praise be to God. Natheless, they are sure to die; being sons of Adam, as well as of thee, dame. But, die when they will, 'twill cost them nothing; the burial fees being paid and entered in this book.' 'For all that, 'twill cost them something,' quoth the miller, the greatest wag in the place, and as big a knave as any; for which was the biggest God knoweth, but no mortal man, not even the hangman. 'Miller, I tell thee nay', quo the curé. 'Parson, I tell you ay,' quo the miller. ''Twill cost them their lives.' At which millstone conceit was a great laugh; and in the general mirth the fees were paid and the Christians made.

"But when the next parishioner's child, and the next after, and all, had to pay each his burial fee, or lose his place in heaven, discontent did secretly rankle in the parish. Well, one fine day they met in secret, and sent a churchwarden with a complaint to the bishop, and a thunderbolt fell on the poor curé. Came to him at dinner-time a summons to the episcopal palace, to bring the parish books and answer certain charges. Then the curé guessed where the shoe pinched. He left his food on the board; for small his appetite now; and took the parish books and went quaking.

"The bishop entertained him with a frown, and exposed the plaint. 'Monseigneur,' said the curé right humbly, 'doth the parish allege many things against me, or this one only?' 'In sooth, but this one,' said the bishop; and softened a little. 'First, monseigneur, I acknowledge the fact.' ''Tis well,' quoth the bishop; 'that saves time and trouble. Now to your excuse, if excuse there be.' 'Monseigneur, I have been curé of that parish seven years, and fifty children have I baptized, and buried not five. At first I used to say, "Heaven be praised, the air of this village is main healthy," but on searching the register book I found 'twas always so, and on probing the matter, it came out that of those born at Domfront, all, but here and there one, did go and get hanged at Aix. But this was to defraud not their curé only, but the entire Church of her dues: since "pendards" pay no funeral fees, being buried in air. Thereupon, knowing by sad experience their greed, and how they grudge the Church every sou, I laid a trap to keep them from hanging: for, greed against greed, there be of them that will die in their beds like true men, ere the Church shall gain those funeral fees for nought.' Then the bishop laughed till the tears ran down, and questioned the churchwarden, and he was fain to confess that too many of the parish did come to that unlucky end at Aix. 'Then,' said the bishop, 'I do approve the act, for myself and my successors; and so be it ever, till they mend their manners and die in their beds.' And the next day came the ringleaders crest-fallen to the curé, and said, 'Parson, ye were ever good to us, barring this untoward matter: prithee let there be no ill blood anent so trivial a thing.' And the curé said, 'My children, I were unworthy to be your pastor could I not forgive a wrong; go in peace, and get me as many children as may be, that by the double fees the curé you love may miss starvation.'

"And the bishop often told the story, and it kept his memory of the curé alive, and at last he shifted him to a decent parish, where he can offer a glass of old Medoc to such as are worthy of it. Their name it is not legion."

A light broke in upon Gerard, his countenance showed it.

"Ay!" said his host, "I am that curé: so now thou canst guess why I said 'At their old tricks.' My life on't they have wheedled my successor into remitting those funeral fees. You are well out of that parish. And so am I."

The curé's little niece burst in, "Uncle, the weighing:--la! a stranger!" And burst out.

The curé rose directly, but would not part with Gerard.

"Wet thy beard once more, and come with me."

In the church porch they found the sexton with a huge pair of scales, and weights of all sizes. Several humble persons were standing by, and soon a woman stepped forward with a sickly child and said, "Be it heavy, be it light, I vow, in rye meal of the best, whate'er this child shall weigh, and the same will duly pay to holy Church, an if he shall cast his trouble. Pray, good people, for this child, and for me his mother hither come in dole and care!"

The child was weighed, and yelled as if the scale had been the font.

"Courage! dame," cried Gerard. "This is a good sign. There is plenty of life here to battle its trouble."

"Now, blest be the tongue that tells me so," said the poor woman. She hushed her ponderling against her bosom, and stood aloof watching, whilst another woman brought her child to scale.

But presently a loud, dictatorial voice was heard. "Way there, make way for the seigneur!"

The small folk parted on both sides like waves ploughed by a lordly galley, and in marched in gorgeous attire, his cap adorned by a feather with a topaz at its root, his jerkin richly furred, satin doublet, red hose, shoes like skates, diamond-hilted sword in velvet scabbard, and hawk on his wrist, "the lord of the manor." He flung himself into the scales as if he was lord of the zodiac as well as the manor; whereat the hawk balanced and flapped; but stuck: then winked.

While the sexton heaved in the great weights, the curé told Gerard: "My lord had been sick unto death, and vowed his weight in bread and cheese to the poor, the Church taking her tenth."

"Permit me, my lord; if your lordship continues to press with your lordship's staff on the other scale, you will disturb the balance."

His lordship grinned and removed his staff, and leaned on it. The curé politely but firmly objected to that too.

"Mille diables! what am I to do with it, then?" cried the other.

"Deign to hold it out so, my lord, wide of both scales."

When my lord did this, and so fell into the trap he had laid for holy Church, the good curé whispered to Gerard, "Cretensis incidit in Cretensem!" which I take to mean, "Diamond cut diamond." He then said with an obsequious air, "If that your lordship grudges Heaven full weight, you might set the hawk on your lacquey, and so save a pound."

"Gramercy for thy rede, curé," cried the great man, reproachfully. "Shall I for one sorry pound grudge my poor fowl the benefit of holy Church? I'd as lieve the devil should have me and all my house as her, any day i' the year."

"Sweet is affection," whispered the curé.

"Between a bird and a brute," whispered Gerard.

"Tush!" and the curé looked terrified.

The seigneur's weight was booked, and Heaven I trust and believe did not weigh his gratitude in the balance of the sanctuary.

For my unlearned reader is not to suppose there was anything the least eccentric in the man, or his gratitude to the Giver of health and all good gifts. Men look forward to death, and back upon past sickness, with different eyes. Item, when men drive a bargain, they strive to get the sunny side of it; it matters not one straw whether it is with man or Heaven they are bargaining. In this respect we are the same now, at bottom, as we were four hundred years ago: only in those days we did it a grain or two more naïvely, and that naïveté shone out more palpably, because, in that rude age, body prevailing over mind, all sentiments took material forms. Man repented with scourges, prayed by bead, bribed the saints with wax tapers, put fish into the body to sanctify the soul, sojourned in cold water for empire over the emotions, and thanked God for returning health in 1 cwt. 2 stone 7 lb. 3 oz. 1 dwt. of bread and cheese.

Whilst I have been preaching, who preach so rarely and so ill, the good curé has been soliciting the lord of the manor to step into the church, and give order what shall be done with his great-great-grandfather.

"Ods bodikins! what, have you dug him up?"

"Nay, my lord, he never was buried."

"What, the old dict was true after all?"

"So true that the workmen this very day found a skeleton erect in the pillar they are repairing. I had sent to my lord at once, but I knew he would be here."

"It is he! 'Tis he!" said his descendant, quickening his pace. "Let us go see the old boy. This youth is a stranger I think."

Gerard bowed.

"Know then that my great-great-grandfather held his head high, and, being on the point of death, revolted against lying under the aisle with his forbears for mean folk to pass over. So, as the tradition goes, he swore his son (my great-grandfather) to bury him erect in one of the pillars of the church" (here they entered the porch). "'For,' quoth he, 'NO BASE MAN SHALL PASS OVER MY STOMACH.' Peste!" and, even while speaking, his lordship parried adroitly with his stick a skull that came hopping at him, bowled by a boy in the middle of the aisle, who took to his heels yelling with fear the moment he saw what he had done. His lordship hurled the skull furiously after him as he ran, at which the curé gave a shout of dismay and put forth his arm to hinder him, but was too late.

The curé groaned aloud. And, as if this had evoked spirits of mischief, up started a whole pack of children from some ambuscade, and unseen, but heard loud enough, clattered out of the church like a covey rising in a thick wood.

"Oh! these pernicious brats," cried the curé. "The workmen cannot go to their nonemete but the church is rife with them. Pray Heaven they have not found his late lordship; nay, I mind, I hid his lordship under a workman's jerkin, and--saints defend us! the jerkin has been moved."

The poor curé's worst misgivings were realized: the rising generation of plebeians had played the mischief with the haughty old noble. "The little ones had jockeyed for the bones oh" and pocketed such of them as seemed adapted for certain primitive games then in vogue amongst them.

"I'll excommunicate them," roared the curate, "and all their race."

"Never heed," said the scapegrace lord: and stroked his hawk; "there is enough of him to swear by. Put him back! put him back!"

"Surely, my lord, 'tis your will his bones be laid in hallowed earth, and masses said for his poor prideful soul?"

The noble stroked his hawk.

"Are ye there, Master Curé?" said he. "Nay, the business is too old: he is out of purgatory by this time, up or down. I shall not draw my pursestrings for him. Every dog his day. Adieu, Messires, adieu, ancestor:" and he sauntered off whistling to his hawk and caressing it.

His reverence looked ruefully after him.

"Cretensis incidit in Cretensem," said he sorrowfully. "I thought I had him safe for a dozen masses. Yet I blame him not, but that young ne'er-do-weel which did trundle his ancestor's skull at us: for who could venerate his great-great-grandsire and play football with his head? Well it behoves us to be better Christians than he is." So they gathered the bones reverently, and the curé locked them up and forbade the workmen, who now entered the church, to close up the pillar, till he should recover by threats of the Church's wrath every atom of my lord. And he showed Gerard a famous shrine in the church. Before it were the usual gifts of tapers, &c. There was also a wax image of a falcon, most curiously moulded and coloured to the life, eyes and all. Gerard's eye fell at once on this, and he expressed the liveliest admiration. The curé assented. Then Gerard asked "Could the saint have loved hawking?"

The curé laughed at his simplicity. "Nay, 'tis but a statuary hawk. When they have a bird of gentle breed they cannot train they make his image, and send it to this shrine with a present, and pray the saint to work upon the stubborn mind of the original, and make it ductile as wax: that is the notion, and methinks a reasonable one, too."

Gerard assented. "But alack, reverend sir, were I a saint, methinks I should side with the innocent dove, rather than with the cruel hawk that rends her."

"By St. Denys you are right," said the curé. "But, que voulez-vous? the saints are débonair, and have been flesh themselves, and know man's frailty and absurdity. 'Tis the Bishop of Avignon sent this one."

"What do bishops hawk in this country?"

"One and all. Every noble person hawks, and lives with hawk on wrist. Why my lord abbot hard by, and his lordship that has just parted from us, had a two years' feud as to where they should put their hawks down on that very altar there. Each claimed the right hand of the altar for his bird."

"What desecration!"

"Nay! nay! thou knowest we make them doff both glove and hawk to take the blessed eucharist. Their jewelled gloves will they give to a servant or simple Christian to hold: but their beloved hawks they will put down on no place less than the altar."

Gerard inquired how the battle of the hawks ended.

"Why, the abbot he yielded, as the Church yields to laymen. He searched ancient books, and found that the left hand was the more honourable, being in truth the right hand, since the altar is east, but looks westward. So he gave my lord the soi-disant right hand, and contented himself with the real right hand, and even so may the Church still outwit the lay nobles and their arrogance, saving your presence."

"Nay, sir, I honour the Church. I am convent bred, and owe all I have and am to holy Church."

"Ah, that accounts for my sudden liking to thee. Art a gracious youth. Come and see me whenever thou wilt."

Gerard took this as a hint that he might go now. It jumped with his own wish, for he was curious to hear what Denys had seen and done all this time. He made his reverence and walked out of the church; but was no sooner clear of it than he set off to run with all his might: and, tearing round a corner, ran into a large stomach, whose owner clutched him, to keep himself steady under the shock; but did not release his hold on regaining his equilibrium.

"Let go, man," said Gerard.

"Not so. You are my prisoner."

"Prisoner?"

"Ay."

"What for in heaven's name?"

"What for? Why sorcery."

"SORCERY?"

"Sorcery."

Spotted a typo or a problem in this chapter? Tell us

Chapter XXXVII

THE culprits were condemned to stand pinioned in the market-place for two hours, that should any persons recognize them or any of them as guilty of other crimes, they might depose to that effect at the trial.

They stood however the whole period, and no one advanced anything fresh against them. This was the less remarkable that they were night birds, vampires who preyed in the dark on weary travellers, mostly strangers.

But, just as they were being taken down, a fearful scream was heard in the crowd, and a woman pointed at one of them, with eyes almost starting from their sockets: but ere she could speak she fainted away.

Then men and women crowded round her partly to aid her, partly from curiosity. When she began to recover they fell to conjectures.

"'Twas at him she pointed."

"Nay, 'twas at this one."

"Nay, nay," said another, "'twas at yon hangdog with the hair hung round his neck."

All further conjecture was cut short. The poor creature no sooner recovered her senses than she flew at the landlord like a lioness. "My child! Man! man! Give me back my child." And she seized the glossy golden hair that the officers had hung round his neck, and tore it from his neck, and covered it with kisses: then, her poor confused mind clearing, she saw even by this token that her lost girl was dead, and sank suddenly down shrieking and sobbing so over the poor hair, that the crowd rushed on the assassin with one savage growl. His life had ended then and speedily, for in those days all carried death at their girdles. But Denys drew his sword directly, and shouting "A moi, camarades!" kept the mob at bay. "Who lays a finger on him dies." Other archers backed him, and with some difficulty they kept him uninjured, while Denys appealed to those who shouted for his blood.

"What sort of vengeance is this? would you be so mad as rob the wheel, and give the vermin an easy death?"

The mob was kept passive by the archers' steel rather than by Denys's words, and growled at intervals with flashing eyes. The municipal officers seeing this, collected round, and with the archers made a guard, and prudently carried the accused back to gaol.

The mob hooted them, and the prisoners, indiscriminately. Denys saw the latter safely lodged, then made for the "White Hart," where he expected to find Gerard.

On the way he saw two girls working at a first floor window. He saluted them. They smiled. He entered into conversation. Their manners were easy, their complexion high.

He invited them to a repast at the "White Hart." They objected. He acquiesced in their refusal. They consented. And in this charming society he forgot all about poor Gerard, who meantime was carried off to gaol; but on the way suddenly stopped, having now somewhat recovered his presence of mind, and demanded to know by whose authority he was arrested. "By the vice-baillie's," said the constable.

"The vice-baillie! Alas! what have I a stranger done to offend a vice-baillie For this charge of sorcery must be a blind. No sorcerer am I: but a poor true lad far from his home."

This vague shift disgusted the officer. "Show him the capias, Jacques," said he.

Jacques held out the writ in both hands about a yard and a half from Gerard's eye; and at the same moment the large constable suddenly pinned him; both officers were on tenter-hooks lest the prisoner should grab the document, to which they attached a superstitious importance.

But the poor prisoner had no such thought. Query whether he would have touched it with the tongs. He just craned out his neck and read it, and, to his infinite surprise, found the vice-bailiff who had signed the writ was the friendly alderman. He took courage and assured his captor there was some error. But finding he made no impression, demanded to be taken before the alderman.

"What say you to that, Jacques?"

"Impossible. We have no orders to take him before his worship. Read the writ!"

"Nay, but good kind fellows, what harm can it be? I will give ye each an écu."

"Jacques, what say you to that?"

"Humph? I say we have no orders not to take him to his worship. Read the writ!"

"Then say we take him to prison round by his worship."

It was agreed. They got the money: and bade Gerard observe they were doing him a favour. He saw they wanted a little gratitude as well as much silver. He tried to satisfy this cupidity, but it stuck in his throat. Feigning was not his forte.

He entered the alderman's presence with his heart in his mouth, and begged with faltering voice to know what he had done to offend since he left that very room with Manon and Denys.

"Nought that I know of," said the alderman.

On the writ being shown him, he told Gerard he had signed it at daybreak. "I get old and my memory faileth me: a discussing of the girl I quite forgot your own offence: but I remember now. All is well. You are he I committed for sorcery. Stay! ere you go to gaol, you shall hear what your accuser says: run and fetch him, you."

The man could not find the accuser all at once. So the alderman, getting impatient, told Gerard the main charge was that he had set a dead body a burning with diabolical fire, that flamed, but did not consume. "And if 'tis true, young man, I'm sorry for thee, for thou wilt assuredly burn with fire of good pine logs in the market-place of Neufchasteau."

"Oh, sir, for pity's sake let me have speech with his reverence the curé."

The alderman advised Gerard against it. "The Church was harder upon sorcerers than was the corporation."

"But, sir, I am innocent," said Gerard, between snarling and whining.

"Oh; if you--think--you are innocent--officer, go with him to the curé! but see he 'scape you not. Innocent quotha?"

They found the curé in his doublet repairing a wheelbarrow. Gerard told him all, and appealed piteously to him. "Just for using a little phosphorus--in self-defence--against cut-throats they are going to hang."

It was lucky for our magician that he had already told his tale in full to the curé: for thus that shrewd personage had hold of the stick at the right end. The corporation held it by the ferule. His reverence looked exceedingly grave and said, "I must question you privately on this untoward business." He took him into a private room and bade the officer stand outside and guard the door, and be ready to come if called. The big constable stood outside the door, quaking, and expecting to see the room fly away and leave a stink of brimstone. Instantly they were alone the curé unlocked his countenance and was himself again.

"Show me the trick on't," said he, all curiosity.

"I cannot, sir, unless the room be darkened."

The curé speedily closed out the light with a wooden shutter. "Now then."

"But on what shall I put it?" said Gerard. "Here is no dead face. 'Twas that made it look so dire." The curé groped about the room. "Good: here is an image: 'tis my patron saint."

"Heaven forbid! That were profanation."

"Pshaw! 'twill rub off, will't not?"

"Ay, but it goes against me to take such liberty with a saint," objected the sorcerer.

"Fiddlestick!" said the divine.

"To be sure my putting it on his holiness will show your reverence it is no Satanic art."

"Mayhap 'twas for that I did propose it," said the curé subtly.

Thus encouraged Gerard fired the eyes and nostrils of the image and made the curé jump. Then lighted up the hair in patches: and set the whole face shining like a glowworm's.

"By'r Lady," shouted the curé, "'tis strange, and small my wonder that they took you for a magician, seeing a dead face thus fired. Now come thy ways with me!"

He put on his grey gown and great hat, and in a few minutes they found themselves in presence of the alderman. By his side, poisoning his mind, stood the accuser, a singular figure in red hose and red shoes, a black gown with blue bands, and a cocked hat.

After saluting the alderman, the curé turned to this personage and said good-humouredly, "So, Mangis, at thy work again, babbling away honest men's lives! Come, your worship, this is the old tale; two of a trade can ne'er agree. Here is Mangis, who professes sorcery, and would sell himself to Satan to-night, but that Satan is not so weak as to buy what he can have gratis, this Mangis, who would be a sorcerer, but is only a quacksalver, accuses of magic a true lad, who did but use in self-defence a secret of chemistry well known to me and to all churchmen."

"But he is no churchman to dabble in such mysteries," objected the alderman.

"He is more churchman than layman, being convent bred, and in the lesser orders," said the ready curé. "Therefore, sorcerer, withdraw thy plaint without more words!"

"That will I not, your reverence," replied Mangis stoutly. "A sorcerer I am, but a white one, not a black one. I make no pact with Satan, but on the contrary still battle him with lawful and necessary arts. I ne'er profane the sacraments, as do the black sorcerers, nor turn myself into a cat and go sucking infants' blood, nor e'en their breath, nor set dead men o' fire. I but tell the peasants when their cattle and their hens are possessed, and at what time of the moon to plant rye, and what days in each month are lucky for wooing of women and selling of bullocks, and so forth: above all, it is my art and my trade to detect the black magicians, as I did that whole tribe of them who were burnt at Dol but last year."

"Ay, Mangis. And what is the upshot of that famous fire thy tongue did kindle?"

"Why, their ashes were cast to the wind."

"Ay. But the true end of thy comedy is this. The parliament of Dijon hath since sifted the matter, and found they were no sorcerers, but good and peaceful citizens; and but last week did order masses to be said for their souls, and expiatory farces and mysteries to be played for them in seven towns of Burgundy; all which will not of those cinders make men and women again. Now 'tis our custom in this land, when we have slain the innocent by hearkening to false knaves like thee, not to blame our credulous ears, but the false tongue that gulled them. Wherefore bethink thee that, at a word from me to my lord bishop, thou wilt smell burning pine nearer than e'er knave smelt it and lived, and wilt travel on a smoky cloud to him whose heart thou bearest (for the word devil in the Latin it meaneth 'false accuser'), and whose livery thou wearest."

And the curé pointed at Mangis with his staff.

"That is true i'fegs," said the alderman, "for red and black be the foul fiendys colours."

By this time the white sorcerer's cheek was as colourless as his dress was fiery. Indeed the contrast amounted to pictorial. He stammered out "I respect holy Church and her will; he shall fire the churchyard, and all in it, for me: I do withdraw the plaint."

"Then withdraw thyself," said the vice-bailiff.

The moment he was gone, the curé took the conversational tone, and told the alderman courteously that the accused had received the chemical substance from holy Church, and had restored it her, by giving it all to him.

"Then 'tis in good hands," was the reply; "young man, you are free. Let me have your reverence's prayers."

"Doubt it not! Humph? Vice-baillie, the town owes me four silver franks, this three months and more."

"They shall be paid, curé, ay, ere the week be out."

On this good understanding Church and State parted. As soon as he was in the street Gerard caught the priest's hand, and kissed it.

"Oh, sir! Oh, your reverence. You have saved me from the fiery stake. What can I say, what do? what--"

"Nought, foolish lad. Bounty rewards itself. Natheless--Humph?--I wish I had done't without leasing. It ill becomes my function to utter falsehoods."

"Falsehood, sir?" Gerard was mystified.

"Didst not hear me say thou hadst given me that same phosphorus? 'Twill cost me a fortnight's penance, that light word." The curé sighed, and his eye twinkled cunningly.

"Nay, nay," cried Gerard eagerly. "Now Heaven forbid! That was no falsehood, father: well you knew the phosphorus was yours, is yours." And he thrust the bottle into the curé's hand; "But alas, 'tis too poor a gift: will you not take from my purse somewhat for holy Church?" and now he held out his purse with glistening eyes.

"Nay," said the other brusquely, and put his hands quickly behind him: "not a doit. Fie! fie! art pauper et exul. Come thou rather each day at noon and take thy diet with me; for my heart warms to thee;" and he went off abruptly with his hands behind him.

They itched.

But they itched in vain.

Where there's a heart there's a Rubicon.

* * * * *

Gerard went hastily to the inn to relieve Denys of the anxiety so long and mysterious an absence must have caused him. He found him seated at his ease, playing dice with two young ladies whose manners were unreserved, and complexion high.

Gerard was hurt. "N'oubliez point la Jeanneton!" said he, colouring up.

"What of her?" said Denys gaily rattling the dice.

"She said 'le peu que sont les femmes.'"

"Oh did she? and what say you to that, mesdemoiselles?"

"We say that none run women down, but such as are too old or too ill-favoured, or too witless, to please them."

"Witless, quotha. Wise men have not folly enough to please them, nor madness enough to desire to please them," said Gerard loftily: "but 'tis to my comrade I speak, not to you, you brazen toads, that make so free with a man at first sight."

"Preach away, comrade. Fling a byword or two at our heads. Know, girls, that he is a very Solomon for bywords. Methinks he was brought up by hand on 'em."

"Be thy friendship a byword!" retorted Gerard. "The friendship that melts to nought at sight of a farthingale."

"Malheureux!" cried Denys, "I speak but pellets, and thou answerest daggers."

"Would I could," was the reply. "Adieu."

"What a little savage!" said one of the girls.

Gerard opened the door and put in his head. "I have thought of a byword," said he spitefully,

"'Qui hante femmes et dez Il mourra en pauvretez.'

There." And having delivered this thunderbolt of antique wisdom he slammed the door viciously ere any of them could retort.

And now, being somewhat exhausted by his anxieties, he went to the bar for a morsel of bread and a cup of wine. The landlord would sell nothing less than a pint bottle. Well then he would have a bottle: but, when he came to compare the contents of the bottle with its size, great was the discrepancy: on this he examined the bottle keenly, and found that the glass was thin where the bottle tapered, but towards the bottom unnaturally thick. He pointed this out at once.

The landlord answered superciliously that he did not make bottles: and was nowise accountable for their shape.

"That we will see presently," said Gerard. "I will take this thy pint to the vice-bailiff."

"Nay, nay, for Heaven's sake," cried the landlord changing his tone at once. "I love to content my customers. If, by chance this pint be short, we will charge it and its fellow three sous, instead of two sous each."

"So be it. But much I admire that you, the host of so fair an inn, should practise thus. The wine too smacketh strongly of spring water."

"Young sir," said the landlord, "we cut no travellers' throats at this inn, as they do at most. However, you know all about that. The 'White Hart' is no lion, nor bear. Whatever masterful robbery is done here, is done upon the poor host. How then could he live at all if he dealt not a little crooked with the few who pay?"

Gerard objected to this system root and branch. Honest trade was small profits, quick returns; and neither to cheat nor be cheated.

The landlord sighed at this picture. "So might one keep an inn in heaven, but not in Burgundy. When foot soldiers going to the wars are quartered on me, how can I but lose by their custom? Two sous per day is their pay, and they eat two sous' worth, and drink into the bargain. The pardoners are my good friends, but palmers and pilgrims, what think you I gain by them? marry, a loss. Minstrels and jongleurs draw custom, and so claim to pay no score, except for liquor. By the secular monks I neither gain nor lose, but the black and grey friars have made vow of poverty, but not of famine; eat like wolves and give the poor host nought but their prayers; and mayhap not them: how can he tell? In my father's day we had the weddings: but now the great gentry let their houses and their plates, their mugs, and their spoons, to any honest couple that want to wed, and thither the very mechanics go with their brides and bridal train. They come not to us: indeed we could not find seats and vessels for such a crowd as eat and drink and dance the week out at the homeliest wedding now. In my father's day the great gentry sold wine by the barrel only; but now they have leave to cry it, and sell it by the galopin, in the very market-place. How can we vie with them? They grow it. We buy it of the grower. The coroner's quests we have still, and these would bring goodly profit, but the meat is aye gone ere the mouths be full."

"You should make better provision," suggested his hearer.

"The law will not let us. We are forbidden to go into the market for the first hour. So, when we arrive, the burghers have bought all but the refuse. Besides the law forbids us to buy more than three bushels of meal at a time: yet market day comes but once a week. As for the butchers, they will not kill for us unless we bribe them."

"Courage!" said Gerard kindly, "the shoe pinches every trader somewhere."

"Ay: but not as it pinches us. Our shoe is trode all o' one side as well as pinches us lame. A savoir, if we pay not the merchants we buy meal, meat, and wine of, they can cast us into prison and keep us there till we pay or die. But we cannot cast into prison those who buy those very victuals of us. A traveller's horse we may keep for his debt; but where in Heaven's name? In our own stable, eating his head off at our cost. Nay, we may keep the traveller himself, but where? In gaol? Nay, in our own good house, and there must we lodge and feed him gratis. And so fling good silver after bad? merci; no: let him go with a wanion. Our honestest customers are the thieves. Would to Heaven there were more of them. They look not too close into the shape of the canakin, nor into the host's reckoning: with them and with their purses 'tis lightly come, and lightly go. Also they spend freely, not knowing but each carouse may be their last. But the thief-takers, instead of profiting by this fair example, are for ever robbing the poor host. When noble or honest travellers descend at our door, come the provost's men pretending to suspect them, and demanding to search them and their papers. To save which offence the host must bleed wine and meat. Then come the excise to examine all your weights and measures. You must stop their mouths with meat and wine. Town excise. Royal excise. Parliament excise. A swarm of them, and all with a wolf in their stomachs and a sponge in their gullets. Monks, friars, pilgrims, palmers, soldiers, excisemen, provost-marshals and men, and mere bad debtors, how can the 'White Hart' butt against all these? Cutting no throats in self-defence as do your 'Swans' and 'Roses' and 'Boar's Heads' and 'Red Lions' and 'Eagles,' your 'Moons,' 'Stars,' and 'Moors,' how can the 'White Hart' give a pint of wine for a pint? And everything risen so. Why, lad, not a pound of bread I sell but costs me three good copper deniers, twelve to the sou; and each pint of wine, bought by the tun, costs me four deniers; every sack of charcoal two sous, and gone in a day. A pair of partridges five sous. What think you of that? Heard one ever the like? five sous for two little beasts all bone and feather? A pair of pigeons, thirty deniers. 'Tis ruination!!! For we may not raise our pricen with the market. Oh no. I tell thee the shoe is trod all o' one side as well as pinches the water into our eyn. We may charge nought for mustard, pepper, salt, or firewood. Think you we get them for nought? Candle it is a sou the pound. Salt five sous the stone, pepper four sous the pound, mustard twenty deniers the pint: and raw meat, dwindleth it on the spit with no cost to me but loss of weight? Why what think you I pay my cook? But you shall never guess. A HUNDRED SOUS A YEAR AS I AM A LIVING SINNER.

"And my waiter thirty sous, besides his perquisites. He is a hantle richer than I am. And then to be insulted as well as pillaged. Last Sunday I went to church. It is a place I trouble not often. Didn't the curé lash the hotel-keepers? I grant you he hit all the trades, except the one that is a byword for looseness, and pride, and sloth, to wit the clergy. But, mind you, he stripeit the other lay estates with a feather, but us hotel-keepers with a neat's pizzle: godless for this, godless for that, and most godless of all for opening our doors during mass. Why the law forces us to open at all hours to travellers from another town, stopping, halting, or passing: those be the words. They can fine us before the bailiff if we refuse them, mass or no mass: and, say a townsman should creep in with the true travellers, are we to blame? They all vow they are tired wayfarers; and can I ken every face in a great town like this? So if we respect the law our poor souls are to suffer, and if we respect it not, our poor lank purses must bleed at two holes, fine and loss of custom."

A man speaking of himself in general, is "a babbling brook;" of his wrongs, "a shining river."

"Labitur et labetur in omne volubilis ævum."

So luckily for my readers, though not for all concerned, this injured orator was arrested in mid career. Another man burst in upon his wrongs with all the advantage of a recent wrong; a wrong red hot. It was Denys cursing and swearing and crying that he was robbed.

"Did those hussies pass this way? who are they? where do they bide? They have ta'en my purse and fifteen golden pieces: raise the hue and cry! ah! traitresses! vipers! These inns are all guetapens."

"There now," cried the landlord to Gerard.

Gerard implored him to be calm and say how it had befallen.

"First one went out on some pretence: then after a while the other went to fetch her back, and, neither returning, I clapped hand to purse and found it empty: the ungrateful creatures, I was letting them win it in a gallop: but loaded dice were not quick enough; they must claw it all in a lump."

Gerard was for going at once to the alderman and setting the officers to find them.

"Not I," said Denys. "I hate the law. No: as it came so let it go."

Gerard would not give if up so.

At a hint from the landlord he forced Denys along with him to the provost-marshal. That dignitary shook his head. "We have no clue to occasional thieves, that work honestly at their needles, till some gull comes and tempts them with an easy booty, and then they pluck him."

"Come away," cried Denys furiously. "I knew what use a bourgeois would be to me at a pinch:" and he marched off in a rage.

"They are clear of the town ere this," said Gerard.

"Speak no more on't if you prize my friendship. I have five pieces with the bailiff, and ten I left with Marion, luckily: or these traitresses had feathered their nest with my last plume. What dost gape for so? Nay, I do ill to vent my choler on thee: I'll tell thee all. Art wiser than I. What saidst thou at the door? No matter. Well then I did offer marriage to that Marion."

Gerard was dumbfoundered.

"What? you offered her what?"

"Marriage. Is that such a mighty strange thing to offer a wench?"

"'Tis a strange thing to offer to a strange girl in passing."

"Nay, I am not such a sot as you opine. I saw the corn in all that chaff. I knew I could not get her by fair means, so I was fain to try foul. 'Mademoiselle,' said I, 'marriage is not one of my habits, but struck by your qualities I make an exception: deign to bestow this hand on me.'"

"And she bestowed it on thine ear."

"Not so. On the contrary she--Art a disrespectful young monkey. Know that here, not being Holland or any other barbarous state, courtesy begets courtesy. Says she a colouring like a rose, 'Soldier, you are too late. He is not a patch on you for looks, but then--he has loved me a long time.'

"'He? who?'

"'T'other.'

"'What other?'

"'Why he that was not too late.' Oh, that is the way they all speak, the loves; the she-wolves. Their little minds go in leaps. Think you they marshal their words in order of battle? their tongues are in too great a hurry. Says she, 'I love him not; not to say love him: but he does me, and dearly: and for that reason I'd sooner die than cause him grief, I would.'"

"Now I believe she did love him."

"Who doubts that? Why she said so, round about, as they always say these things, and with 'nay' for 'ay'. 'I hope you will be happy together,' said I.

"Well one thing led to another, and at last as she could not give me her hand, she gave me a piece of advice, and that was to leave part of my money with the young mistress. Then, when bad company had cleaned me out, I should have some to travel back with, said she. I said I would better her advice, and leave it with her. Her face got red. Says she, 'Think what you do. Chambermaids have an ill name for honesty.' 'Oh, the devil is not so black as he is painted,' said I. 'I'll risk it;' and I left fifteen gold pieces with her."

Gerard sighed. "I wish you may ever see them again. It is wondrous in what esteem you do hold this sex, to trust so to the first comer. For my part I know little about them; I never saw but one I could love as well as I love thee. But the ancients must surely know; and they held women cheap. 'Levius quid fœminâ,' said they, which is but la Jeanneton's tune in Latin, 'Le peu que sont les femmes.' Also do but see how the greybeards of our own day speak of them, being no longer blinded by desire: this alderman to wit."

"Oh novice of novices," cried Denys, "not to have seen why that old fool rails so on the poor things! One day, out of the millions of women he blackens one did prefer some other man to him: for which solitary piece of bad taste, and ten to one 'twas good taste, he doth bespatter creation's fairer half, thereby proving what? le peu que sont les hommes."

"I see women have a shrewd champion in thee," said Gerard, with a smile. But the next moment inquired gravely why he had not told him all this before.

Denys grinned. "Had the girl said 'Ay,' why then I had told thee straight. But 'tis a rule with us soldiers never to publish our defeats: 'tis much if after each check we claim not a victory."

"Now that is true," said Gerard, "Young as I am, I have seen this: that after every great battle the generals on both sides go to the nearest church and sing each a Te Deum for the victory: methinks a Te Martem, or Te Bellonam, or Te Mercurium, Mercury being the god of lies, were more fitting."

"Pas si bête," said Denys, approvingly. "Hast a good eye: canst see a steeple by daylight. So now tell me how thou hast fared in this town all day."

"Come," said Gerard, "'tis well thou hast asked me: for else I had never told thee." He then related in full how he had been arrested, and by what a providential circumstance he had escaped long imprisonment or speedy conflagration.

His narrative produced an effect he had little expected or desired. "I am a traitor," cried Denys. "I left thee in a strange place to fight thine own battles, while I shook the dice with those jades. Now take thou this sword and pass it through my body forthwith."

"What for in Heaven's name?" inquired Gerard.

"For an example," roared Denys. "For a warning to all false loons that profess friendship, and disgrace it."

"Oh, very well," said Gerard. "Yes. Not a bad notion. Where will you have it?"

"Here, through my heart; that is, where other men have a heart, but I none, or a satanic false one."

Gerard made a motion to run him through, and flung his arms round his neck instead. "I know no way to thy heart but this, thou great silly thing."

Denys uttered an exclamation, then hugged him warmly,--and, quite overcome by this sudden turn of youthful affection and native grace, gulped out in a broken voice "Railest on women--and art--like them--with thy pretty ways. Thy mother's milk is in thee still. Satan would love thee, or--le bon Dieu would kick him out of hell for shaming it. Give me thy hand! Give me thy hand! May" (a tremendous oath) "if I let thee out of my sight till Italy."

And so the stanch friends were more than reconciled after their short tiff.

The next day the thieves were tried. The pièces de conviction were reduced in number, to the great chagrin of the little clerk, by the interment of the bones. But there was still a pretty show. A thief's hand struck off flagrante delicto; a murdered woman's hair; the Abbot's axe, and other tools of crime. The skulls &c. were sworn to by the constables who had found them. Evidence was lax in that age and place. They all confessed but the landlord. And Manon was called to bring the crime home to him. Her evidence was conclusive. He made a vain attempt to shake her credibility by drawing from her that her own sweetheart had been one of the gang, and that she had held her tongue so long as he was alive. The public prosecutor came to the aid of his witness, and elicited that a knife had been held to her throat, and her own sweetheart had sworn with solemn oaths to kill her should she betray them, and that this terrible threat, and not the mere fear of death, had glued her lips.

The other thieves were condemned to be hanged, and the landlord to be broken on the wheel. He uttered a piercing cry when his sentence was pronounced.

As for poor Manon she became the subject of universal criticism. Nor did opinion any longer run dead in her favour; it divided into two broad currents. And, strange to relate, the majority of her own sex took her part, and the males were but equally divided; which hardly happens once in a hundred years. Perhaps some lady will explain the phenomenon. As for me, I am a little shy of explaining things I don't understand. It has become so common. Meantime, had she been a lover of notoriety, she would have been happy, for the town talked of nothing but her. The poor girl however had but one wish; to escape the crowd that followed her, and hide her head somewhere where she could cry over her "pendard," whom all these proceedings brought vividly back to her affectionate remembrance. Before he was hanged he had threatened her life: but she was not one of your fastidious girls, who love their male divinities any the less for beating them, kicking them, or killing them, but rather the better, provided these attentions are interspersed with occasional caresses; so it would have been odd indeed had she taken offence at a mere threat of that sort. He had never threatened her with a rival. She sobbed single-mindedly.

Meantime the inn was filled with thirsters for a sight of her, who feasted and drank, to pass away the time till she should deign to appear. When she had been sobbing some time, there was a tap at her door, and the landlord entered with a proposal. "Nay, weep not, good lass, your fortune it is made an you like. Say the word, and you are chambermaid of the 'White Hart.'"

"Nay, nay," said Manon with a fresh burst of grief. "Never more will I be a servant in an inn. I'll go to my mother."

The landlord consoled and coaxed her: and she became calmer, but none the less determined against his proposal.

The landlord left her. But ere long he returned and made her another proposal. Would she be his wife, and landlady of the "White Hart?"

"You do ill to mock me," said she sorrowfully.

"Nay, sweetheart. I mock thee not. I am too old for sorry jests. Say you the word, and you are my partner for better for worse."

She looked at him, and saw he was in earnest: on this she suddenly rained hard to the memory of "le pendard:" the tears came in a torrent being the last; and she gave her hand to the landlord of the "White Hart," and broke a gold crown with him in sign of plighted troth.

"We will keep it dark till the house is quiet," said the landlord.

"Ay," said she: "but meantime prithee give me linen to hem, or work to do: for the time hangs on me like lead."

Her betrothed's eye brightened at this house-wifely request, and he brought her up two dozen flagons of various sizes to clean and polish.

She gathered complacency as she reflected that by a strange turn of fortune all this bright pewter was to be hers.

And this mighty furbishing up of pewter reminds me that justice requires me to do a stroke of the same work.

Well then, the deposition, read out in the alderman's room as Manon's, was not so exact as such things ought to be. The alderman had condensed her evidence. Now there are in every great nation about three persons capable of condensing evidence without falsifying it: but this alderman was not one of that small band. In the first part of the deposition he left out as unimportant these words "my mother advised me to keep out of his way till his wrath should cool."

Between the words "jealous of me" and "the reason" Manon had said "My master was aye at my heels: so I told my mistress, and said I would rather go than be cause of mischief." This the alderman suppressed as mere babel: whereas it was a worthy trait. He also let slip the word "afterwards" in the next sentence. Manon had said the reason they gave afterwards, i. e., "when I was no longer there to contradict them." And so on all through the deposition.

Sometimes the deponent suffered as many a one does now-a-days, in the newspaper and other reports, by the mere suppression of the question. For instance this is what actually was said:--

The Alderman. "Come now, should you have interfered if this soldier had had no beard?"

Manon. "How can I tell what I should have done?"

Now this was merely a sensible answer to a monstrous question no magistrate had a right to put. But, under the condensing process, behold her saddled with a volunteer statement of a very damaging character.

Finally she had said, "I am sorry I told, if I am to be hanged for it."

This the old boy condensed ut supra, p. 136, anticipating as far as possible the tuneful Sinclair.[A]

Whilst Manon and I were cleaning, she her coming, I my parting, pewter, the landlord went down stairs and falling in with our friends drew them aside into the bar.

He then addressed Denys with considerable solemnity. "We are old acquaintances, and you want not for sagacity: now advise me in a strait. My custom is somewhat declining: this girl Manon is the talk of the town; see how full the inn is to-night. She doth refuse to be my chambermaid. I have half a mind to marry her. What think you? shall I say the word?"

Denys in reply merely opened his eyes wide with amazement.

The landlord turned to Gerard with a half-inquiring look.

"Nay, sir," said Gerard. "I am too young to advise my seniors and betters."

"No matter. Let us hear your thought."

"Well, sir, it was said of a good wife by the ancients 'bene quæ latuit, bene vixit,' that is, she is the best wife that is least talked of: but here 'male quæ patuit' were as near the mark. Therefore, an you bear the lass good-will, why not club purses with Denys and me and convey her safe home with a dowry? Then mayhap some rustical person in her own place may be brought to wive her."

"Why so many words?" said Denys. "This old fox is not the ass he affects to be."

"Oh! that is your advice is it?" said the landlord testily. "Well then we shall soon know who is the fool, you or me, for I have spoken to her as it happens; and what is more she has said Ay, and she is polishing the flagons at this moment."

"Oho!" said Denys drily, "'twas an ambuscade. Well, in that case, my advice is, run for the notary, tie the noose, and let us three drink the bride's health, till we see six sots a-tippling."

"And shall. Ay, now you utter sense."

In ten minutes a civil marriage was effected upstairs before a notary and his clerk and our two friends.

In ten minutes more the white hind, dead sick of seclusion, had taken her place within the bar, and was serving out liquids, and bustling, and her color rising a little.

In six minutes more she soundly rated a careless servant-girl for carrying a nipperkin of wine awry and spilling good liquor.

During the evening she received across the bar eight offers of marriage, some of them from respectable burghers. Now the landlord and our two friends had in perfect innocence ensconced themselves behind a screen to drink at their ease the new couple's health. The above comedy was thrown in for their entertainment by bounteous fate. They heard the proposals made one after another, and uninventive Manon's invariable answer--"Serviteur; you are a day after the fair." The landlord chuckled and looked good-natured superiority at both his late advisers, with their traditional notions that men shun a woman "quæ patuit," i. e., who has become the town talk.

But Denys scarce noticed the spouse's triumph over him, he was so occupied with his own over Gerard. At each municipal tender of undying affection, he turned almost purple with the effort it cost him not to roar with glee; and driving his elbow into the deep-meditating and much-puzzled pupil of antiquity, whispered "le peu que sont les hommes."

The next morning Gerard was eager to start, but Denys was under a vow to see the murderers of the golden-haired girl executed.

Gerard respected his vow, but avoided his example.

He went to bid the curé farewell instead, and sought and received his blessing. About noon the travellers got clear of the town. Just outside the south gate they passed the gallows; it had eight tenants: the skeleton of Manon's late wept, and now being fast forgotten, lover, and the bodies of those who had so nearly taken our travellers' lives. A hand was nailed to the beam. And hard by on a huge wheel was clawed the dead landlord, with every bone in his body broken to pieces.

Gerard averted his head and hurried by. Denys lingered, and crowed over his dead foes. "Times are changed, my lads, since we two sat shaking in the cold awaiting you seven to come and cut our throats."

"Fie, Denys! Death squares all reckonings. Prithee pass on without another word, if you prize my respect a groat."

To this earnest remonstrance Denys yielded. He even said thoughtfully "you have been better brought up than I."

About three in the afternoon they reached a little town with the people buzzing in knots. The wolves, starved by the cold, had entered, and eaten two grown-up persons over-night, in the main street: so some were blaming the eaten; "none but fools or knaves are about after nightfall;" others the law for not protecting the town, and others the corporation for not enforcing what laws there were.

"Bah! this is nothing to us," said Denys, and was for resuming their march.

"Ay, but 'tis," remonstrated Gerard.

"What, are we the pair they ate?"

"No, but we may be the next pair."

"Ay, neighbour," said an ancient man, "'tis the town's fault for not obeying the ducal ordinance, which bids every shopkeeper light a lamp o'er his door at sunset, and burn it till sunrise."

On this Denys asked him somewhat derisively, "What made him fancy rush dips would scare away empty wolves? Why mutton fat is all their joy."

"'Tis not the fat, vain man, but the light. All ill things hate light; especially wolves and the imps that lurk, I ween, under their fur. Example; Paris city stands in a wood like, and the wolves do howl around it all night: yet of late years wolves come but little in the streets. For why, in that burgh the watchmen do thunder at each door that is dark, and make the weary wight rise and light. 'Tis my son tells me. He is a great voyager, my son Nicholas."

In further explanation he assured them that previously to that ordinance no city had been worse infested with wolves than Paris; a troop had boldly assaulted the town in 1420, and in 1438 they had eaten fourteen persons in a single month between Montmartre and the gate St. Antoine, and that not a winter month even, but September: and as for the dead, which nightly lay in the streets slain in midnight brawls, or assassinated, the wolves had used to devour them, and to grub up the fresh graves in the churchyards and tear out the bodies.

Here a thoughtful citizen suggested that probably the wolves had been bridled of late in Paris, not by candle-lights, but owing to the English having been driven out of the kingdom of France. "For those English be very wolves themselves for fierceness and greediness." What marvel then that under their rule our neighbours of France should be wolf-eaten? This logic was too suited to the time and place, not to be received with acclamation. But the old man stood his ground. "I grant ye those islanders are wolves: but two-legged ones, and little apt to favour their four-footed cousins. One greedy thing loveth it another? I trow not. By the same token, and this too I have from my boy Nicole, Sir Wolf dare not show his nose in London city; though 'tis smaller than Paris, and thick woods hard by the north wall, and therein great store of deer, and wild boars rife as flies at midsummer."

"Sir," said Gerard, "you seem conversant with wild beasts, prithee advise my comrade here and me: we would not waste time on the road, and if we may go forward to the next town with reasonable safety."

"Young man, I trow 'twere an idle risk. It lacks but an hour of dusk, and you must pass nigh a wood, where lurk some thousands of these half-starved vermin, rank cowards single; but in great bands bold as lions. Wherefore I rede you sojourn here the night; and journey on betimes. By the dawn the vermin will be tired out with roaring and rampaging; and mayhap will have filled their lank bellies with flesh of my good neighbours here, the unteachable fools."

Gerard hoped not; and asked could he recommend them to a good inn?

"Humph? there is the 'Tête d'Or.' My granddaughter keeps it. She is a mijaurée, but not so knavish as most hotel-keepers, and her house indifferent clean."

"Hey, for the 'Tête d'Or,'" struck in Denys, decided by his ineradicable foible.

On the way to it, Gerard inquired of his companion what "a mijaurée" was?

Denys laughed at his ignorance. "Not know what a mijaurée is? why all the world knows that. It is neither more nor less than a mijaurée."

As they entered the "Tête d'Or" they met a young lady richly dressed, with the velvet chaperon on her head, which was confined by law to the nobility. They unbonneted and louted low, and she curtsied, but fixed her eye on vacancy the while, which had a curious rather than a genial effect. However nobility was not so unassuming in those days as it is now. So they were little surprised. But the next minute supper was served, and lo! in came this princess and carved the goose.

"Holy St. Bavon," cried Gerard. "'Twas the landlady all the while."

A young woman, cursed with nice white teeth and lovely hands: for these beauties being misallied to homely features had turned her head. She was a feeble carver, carving not for the sake of others but herself, i. e., to display her hands. When not carving she was eternally either taking a pin out of her head or her body, or else putting a pin into her head or her body. To display her teeth, she laughed indifferently at gay or grave; and from ear to ear. And she "sat at ease" with her mouth ajar.

Now there is an animal in creation of no great general merit; but it has the eye of a hawk for affectation. It is called "a boy." And Gerard was but a boy still in some things; swift to see, and to loathe, affectation. So Denys sat casting sheep's eyes, and Gerard, daggers, at one comedian.

Presently, in the midst of her minauderies, she gave a loud shriek and bounded out of her chair like hare from form, and ran backwards out of the room uttering little screams, and holding her farthingale tight down to her ankles with both hands. And, as she scuttled out of the door, a mouse scuttled back to the wainscot in a state of equal, and perhaps more reasonable, terror. The guests, who had risen in anxiety at the principal yell, now stood irresolute awhile, then sat down laughing. The tender Denys, to whom a woman's cowardice, being a sexual trait, seemed a lovely and pleasant thing, said he would go comfort her and bring her back.

"Nay! nay! nay! for pity's sake let her bide," cried Gerard earnestly. "Oh blessed mouse! sure some saint sent thee to our aid."

Now at his right hand sat a sturdy middle-aged burgher, whose conduct up to date had been cynical. He had never budged, nor even rested his knife, at all this fracas. He now turned on Gerard and inquired haughtily whether he really thought that "grimacière" was afraid of a mouse.

"Ay. She screamed hearty."

"Where is the coquette that cannot scream to the life? These she tavern-keepers do still ape the nobles. Some princess or duchess hath lain here a night, that was honestly afeared of a mouse, having been brought up to it. And this ape hath seen her, and said, 'I will start at a mouse, and make a coil.' She has no more right to start at a mouse, than to wear that fur on her bosom, and that velvet on her monkey's head. I am of the town, young man, and have known the mijaurée all her life, and I mind when she was no more afeard of a mouse than she is of a man." He added that she was fast emptying the inn with these "singeries." "All the world is so sick of her hands, that her very kinsfolk will not venture themselves anigh them." He concluded with something like a sigh, "The 'Tête d'Or' was a thriving hostelry under my old chum her good father; but she is digging its grave tooth and nail."

"Tooth and nail? good! a right merry conceit and a true," said Gerard. But the right merry conceit was an inadvertence as pure as snow, and the stout burgher went to his grave and never knew what he had done: for just then attention was attracted by Denys returning pompously. He inspected the apartment minutely, and with a high official air: he also looked solemnly under the table; and during the whole inquisition a white hand was placed conspicuously on the edge of the open door, and a tremulous voice inquired behind it whether the horrid thing was quite gone.

"The enemy has retreated, bag and baggage," said Denys: and handed in the trembling fair, who, sitting down, apologized to her guests for her foolish fears, with so much earnestness, grace, and seeming self-contempt, that, but for a sour grin on his neighbour's face, Gerard would have been taken in as all the other strangers were. Dinner ended, the young landlady begged an Augustine friar at her right hand to say grace. He delivered a longish one. The moment he began, she clapped her white hands piously together, and held them up joined for mortals to admire; 'tis an excellent pose for taper white fingers; and cast her eyes upward towards heaven, and felt as thankful to it as a magpie does while cutting off with your thimble.

After supper the two friends went to the street-door and eyed the market-place. The mistress joined them, and pointed out the town hall, the borough jail, St. Catherine's church, &c. This was courteous, to say the least. But the true cause soon revealed itself; the fair hand was poked right under their eyes every time an object was indicated; and Gerard eyed it like a basilisk, and longed for a bunch of nettles. The sun set, and the travellers, few in number, drew round the great roaring fire, and, omitting to go on the spit, were frozen behind though roasted in front. For if the German stoves were oppressively hot, the French salles à manger were bitterly cold, and above all stormy. In Germany men sat bareheaded round the stove, and took off their upper clothes, but in Burgundy they kept on their hats, and put on their warmest furs to sit round the great open chimney-places, at which the external air rushed furiously from door and ill-fitting window. However it seems their mediæval backs were broad enough to bear it: for they made themselves not only comfortable but merry, and broke harmless jests over each other in turn. For instance Denys's new shoes, though not in direct communication, had this day exploded with twin-like sympathy and unanimity. "Where do you buy your shoon, soldier?" asked one.

Denys looked askant at Gerard, and not liking the theme, shook it off. "I gather 'em off the trees by the road-side," said he surlily.

"Then you gathered these too ripe," said the hostess, who was only a fool externally.

"Ay, rotten ripe," observed another, inspecting them.

Gerard said nothing, but pointed the circular satire by pantomime. He slily put out both his feet, one after another, under Denys's eye, with their German shoes, on which a hundred leagues of travel had produced no effect. They seemed hewn out of a rock.

At this "I'll twist the smooth varlet's neck that sold me mine," shouted Denys, in huge wrath, and confirmed the threat with singular oaths peculiar to the mediæval military. The landlady put her fingers in her ears, thereby exhibiting the hand in a fresh attitude. "Tell me when he has done his orisons, somebody," said she mincingly. And after that they fell to telling stories.

Gerard, when his turn came, told the adventure of Denys and Gerard at the inn in Domfront, and so well, that the hearers were rapt into sweet oblivion of the very existence of mijaurée and hands. But this made her very uneasy, and she had recourse to her grand coup. This misdirected genius had for a twelvemonth past practised yawning, and could do it now at any moment so naturally as to set all creation gaping, could all creation have seen her. By this means she got in all her charms. For first she showed her teeth, then, out of good breeding, you know, closed her mouth with three taper fingers. So the moment Gerard's story got too interesting and absorbing, she turned to and made yawns, and "croix sur la bouche."

This was all very fine: but Gerard was an artist, and artists are chilled by gaping auditors. He bore up against the yawns a long time: but finding they came from a bottomless reservoir, lost both heart and temper, and suddenly rising in mid narrative, said, "But I weary our hostess, and I am tired myself: so good night!" whipped a candle off the dresser, whispered Denys, "I cannot stand her," and marched to bed in a moment.

The mijaurée coloured and bit her lips. She had not intended her by-play for Gerard's eye: and she saw in a moment she had been rude, and silly, and publicly rebuked. She sat with cheek on fire, and a little natural water in her eyes, and looked ten times comelier and more womanly, and interesting than she had done all day. The desertion of the best narrator broke up the party, and the unassuming Denys approached the meditating mijaurée, and invited her in the most flattering terms, to gamble with him. She started from her reverie, looked him down into the earth's centre with chilling dignity, and consented, for she remembered all in a moment what a show of hands gambling admitted.

The soldier and the mijaurée rattled the dice. In which sport she was so taken up with her hands, that she forgot to cheat, and Denys won "écu au soleil" of her. She fumbled slowly with her purse, partly because her sex do not burn to pay debts of honour: partly to admire the play of her little knuckles peeping between their soft white cushions. Denys proposed a compromise. "Three silver franks I win of you, fair hostess. Give me now three kisses of this white hand, and we'll e'en cry quits."

"You are malapert," said the lady with a toss of her head; "besides they are so dirty. See! they are like ink:" and, to convince him, she put them out to him and turned them up and down. They were no dirtier than cream fresh from the cow. And she knew it: she was eternally washing and scenting them.

Denys read the objection like the observant warrior he was, seized them and mumbled them.

Finding him so appreciative of her charm, she said timidly, "Will you do me a kindness, good soldier?"

"A thousand, fair hostess an you will."

"Nay, I ask but one. 'Tis to tell thy comrade I was right sorry to lose his most thrilling story, and I hope he will tell me the rest to-morrow morning. Meantime I shall not sleep for thinking on't. Wilt tell him that--to pleasure me?"

"Ay, I'll tell the young savage. But he is not worthy of your condescension, sweet hostess. He would rather be aside a man than a woman any day."

"So would--ahem. He is right: the young women of the day are not worthy of him, 'un tas des mijaurées.' He has a good, honest, and right comely face. Any way I would not guest of mine should think me unmannerly, not for all the world. Wilt keep faith with me and tell him?"

"On this fair hand I swear it: and thus I seal the pledge."

"There; no need to melt the wax, though. Now go to bed. And tell him ere you sleep."

The perverse toad (I thank thee, Marion, for teaching me that word) was inclined to bestow her slight affections upon Gerard. Not that she was inflammable: far less so than many that passed for prudes in the town. But Gerard possessed a triple attraction that has ensnared coquettes in all ages. 1. He was very handsome. 2. He did not admire her the least. 3. He had given her a good slap in the face.

Denys woke Gerard and gave the message. Gerard was not enchanted. "Dost wake a tired man to tell him that? Am I to be pestered with 'mijaurées' by night as well as day?"

"But I tell thee, novice, thou hast conquered her: trust to my experience: her voice sank to melodious whispers: and the cunning jade did in a manner bribe me to carry thee her challenge to Love's lists: for so I read her message."

Denys then, assuming the senior and the man of the world, told Gerard the time was come to show him how a soldier understood friendship and camaraderie. Italy was now out of the question. Fate had provided better; and the blind jade Fortune had smiled on merit for once. The "Head of Gold" had been a prosperous inn, would be again with a man at its head. A good general laid far-sighted plans; but was always ready to abandon them, should some brilliant advantage offer; and to reap the full harvest of the unforeseen: 'twas chiefly by this trait great leaders defeated little ones; for these latter could do nothing not cut and dried beforehand.

"Sorry friendship, that would marry me to a mijaurée," interposed Gerard yawning.

"Comrade, be reasonable; 'tis not the friskiest sheep that falls down the cliff. All creatures must have their flings soon, or late; and why not a woman? What more frivolous than a kitten? what graver than a cat?"

"Hast a good eye for nature, Denys," said Gerard, "that I proclaim."

"A better for thine interest, boy. Trust then to me; these little doves they are my study day and night; happy the man whose wife taketh her fling before wedlock; and trippeth up the altar-steps instead of down 'em. Marriage it always changeth them for better or else for worse. Why, Gerard, she is honest when all is done: and he is no man, nor half a man, that cannot mould any honest lass like a bit of warm wax, and she aye aside him at bed and board. I tell thee in one month thou wilt make of this coquette the matron the most sober in the town, and of all its wives the one most docile, and submissive. Why she is half tamed already. Nine in ten meek and mild ones had gently hated thee like poison all their lives, for wounding of their hidden pride. But she for an affront proffers affection. By Joshua his bugle a generous lass, and void of petty malice. When thou wast gone she sat a thinking and spoke not. A sure sign of love in one of her sex: for of all things else they speak ere they think. Also her voice did sink exceedingly low in discoursing of thee, and murmured sweetly; another infallible sign. The bolt hath struck and wrankles in her; oh be joyful! Art silent? I see; 'tis settled. I shall go alone to Remiremont, alone and sad. But, pillage and poleaxes! what care I for that, since my dear comrade will stay here, landlord of the 'Tête d'Or,' and safe from all storms of life? Wilt think of me, Gerard, now and then by thy warm fire, of me camped on some windy heath, or lying in wet trenches or wounded on the field and far from comfort? Nay" (and this he said in a manner truly noble), "not comfortless. For cold, or wet, or bleeding, 'twill still warm my heart to lie on my back and think that I have placed my dear friend, and comrade true, in the 'Tête d'Or,' far from a soldier's ills."

"I let you run on, dear Denys," said Gerard softly, "because at each word you show me the treasure of a good heart. But now bethink thee, my troth is plighted there where my heart it clingeth. You so leal, would you make me disloyal?"

"Perdition seize me, but I forgot that," said Denys.

"No more then, but hie thee to bed, good Denys. Next to Margaret I love thee best on earth, and value thy 'cœur d'or' far more than a dozen of these 'Têtes d'Or.' So prithee call me at the first blush of rosy-fingered morn, and let's away ere the woman with the hands be stirring."

They rose with the dawn, and broke their fast by the kitchen fire.

Denys inquired of the girl whether the mistress was about.

"Nay: but she hath risen from her bed: by the same token I am carrying her this to clean her withal;" and she filled a mug with boiling water and took it upstairs.

"Behold," said Gerard, "the very elements must be warmed to suit her skin; what had the saints said, which still chose the coldest pool? Away, ere she come down and catch us."

They paid the score, and left the "Tête d'Or," while its mistress was washing her hands.

FOOTNOTE:

[A] Sinclair was a singer; and complained to the manager that in the operatic play of Rob Roy he had a multitude of mere words to utter between the songs. 'Cut, my boy, cut!' said the manager. On this vox et p. n. cut Scott, and doubtless many of his cuts would not have discredited the condensers of evidence. But only one of his master-strokes has reached posterity. His melodious organs had been taxed with this sentence: "Rashleigh is my cousin; but, for what reason I cannot divine, he is my bitterest enemy." This he condensed and delivered thus:--"Rashleigh is my cousin, but for what reason I cannot divine."

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Chapter XXXVIII

OUTSIDE the town they found the snow fresh trampled by innumerable wolves every foot of the road.

"We did well to take the old man's advice Denys."

"Ay did we. For now I think on't I did hear them last night a-scurrying under our window and howling and whining for man's flesh in yon market-place. But no fat burgher did pity the poor vagabones, and drop out o' window."

Gerard smiled, but with an air of abstraction.

And they plodded on in silence.

* * * * *

"What dost meditate so profoundly?"

"Thy goodness."

Denys was anything but pleased at this answer. Amongst his oddities you may have observed that he could stand a great deal of real impertinence, he was so good-humoured. But would fire up now and then where not even the shadow of a ground for anger existed.

"A civil question merits a civil reply," said he very drily.

"Alas, I meant no other," said Gerard.

"Then why pretend you were thinking of my goodness, when you know I have no goodness under my skin."

"Had another said this, I had answered 'thou liest.' But to thee I say: 'hast no eye for men's qualities, but only for women's.' And, once more, I do defy thy unreasonable choler, and say I was thinking of thy goodness of overnight. Wouldst have wedded me to the 'Tête d'Or,' or rather to the 'tête de veau dorée,' and left thyself solitary."

"Oh, are ye there, lad?" said Denys recovering his good-humour in a moment. "Well, but to speak sooth, I meant that not for goodness; but for friendship and true fellowship, no more. And let me tell you, my young master, my conscience it pricketh me even now for letting you turn your back thus on fortune and peaceful days. A truer friend than I had ta'en and somewhat hamstrung thee. Then hadst thou been fain to lie smarting at the 'Tête d'Or' a month or so: yon skittish lass had nursed thee tenderly, and all had been well. Blade I had in hand to do't, but, remembering how thou hatest pain though it be but a scratch, my craven heart it failed me at the pinch." And Denys wore a look of humble apology for his lack of virtuous resolution when the path of duty lay so clear.

Gerard raised his eyebrows with astonishment at this monstrous but thoroughly characteristic revelation; however this new and delicate point of friendship was never discussed; viz., whether one ought in all love to cut the tendon Achilles of one's friend. For an incident interposed.

"Here cometh one in our rear a-riding on his neighbour's mule," shouted Denys.

Gerard turned round. "And how know ye 'tis not his own, pray?"

"Oh blind! Because he rides it with no discretion."

And in truth the man came galloping like a fury. But what astonished the friends most was that on reaching them the rustic rider's eyes opened saucer-like, and he drew the rein so suddenly and powerfully, that the mule stuck out her fore legs, and went sliding between the pedestrians like a four-legged table on casters.

"I trow ye are from the 'Tête d'Or.'" They assented. "Which of ye is the younger?"

"He that was born the later," said Denys winking at his companion.

"Gramercy for the news."

"Come, divine then!"

"And shall. Thy beard is ripe; thy fellow's is green; he shall be the younger; here, youngster." And he held him out a paper packet. "Ye left this at the 'Tête d'Or': and our mistress sends it ye."

"Nay, good fellow, methinks I left nought." And Gerard felt his pouch, etc.

"Would ye make our burgess a liar," said the rustic reproachfully: "and shall I have no pourboire?" (still more reproachfully); "and came ventre à terre."

"Nay, thou shalt have pourboire," and he gave him a small coin.

"A la bonne heure," cried the clown, and his feature beamed with disproportionate joy. "The Virgin go with ye; come up, Jenny!" and back he went "stomach to earth," as his nation is pleased to call it.

Gerard undid the packet: it was about six inches square, and inside it he found another packet, which contained a packet, and so on. At the fourth he hurled the whole thing into the snow. Denys took it out and rebuked his petulance. He excused himself on the ground of hating affectation.

Denys attested "'The great toe of the little daughter of Herodias' there was no affectation here, but only woman's good wit. Doubtless the wraps contained something which out of delicacy, or her sex's lovely cunning, she would not her hind should see her bestow on a young man; thy garter, to wit."

"I wear none."

"Her own then; or a lock of her hair. What is this? A piece of raw silk fresh from the worm. Well of all the love tokens!"

"Now who but thee ever dreamed that she is so naught as send me love tokens? I saw no harm in her--barring her hands."

"Stay, here is something hard lurking in this soft nest. Come forth I say, little nestling! Saints and pikestaves! look at this!"

It was a gold ring, with a great amethyst glowing and sparkling, full coloured, but pure as crystal.

"How lovely!" said Gerard, innocently.

"And here is something writ: read it thou! I read not so glib as some; when I know not the matter beforehand."

Gerard took the paper. "'Tis a posy: and fairly enough writ." He read the lines, blushing like a girl. They were very naïve, and may be thus Englished:--

"Youth, with thee my heart is fledde, Come back to the 'golden Hedde!' Wilt not? yet this token keepe Of her whŏ d[=oe]th thy goeing weepe. Gyf the world prove harsh and cold, Come back to 'the Hedde of gold.'"

"The little dove!" purred Denys.

"The great owl! To go and risk her good name thus. However, thank Heaven she has played this prank with an honest lad that will ne'er expose her folly. But oh, the perverseness! Could she not bestow her nauseousness on thee?" Denys sighed and shrugged. "On thee that art as ripe for folly as herself?"

Denys confessed that his young friend had harped his very thought. 'Twas passing strange to him that a damsel with eyes in her head should pass by a man, and bestow her affections on a boy. Still he could not but recognize in this the bounty of Nature. Boys were human beings after all, and, but for this occasional caprice of women, their lot would be too terrible; they would be out of the sun altogether, blighted, and never come to anything: since only the fair could make a man out of such unpromising materials as a boy. Gerard interrupted this flattering discourse to beg the warrior-philosopher's acceptance of the lady's ring. He refused it flatly, and insisted on Gerard going back to the "Tête d'Or" at once, ring and all, like a man, and not letting a poor girl hold out her arms to him in vain.

"Her hands you mean."

"Her hand, with the 'Tête d'Or' in it."

Failing in this he was for putting the ring on his friend's finger. Gerard declined. "I wear a ring already."

"What that sorry gimcrack? Why 'tis pewter, or tin at best: and this virgin gold, forbye the jewel."

"Ay, but 'twas Margaret gave me this one: and I value it above rubies. I'll neither part with it nor give it a rival:" and he kissed the base metal, and bade it fear nought.

"I see the owl hath sent her ring to a goose," said Denys, sorrowfully. However he prevailed on Gerard to fasten it inside his bonnet. To this indeed the lad consented very readily. For sovereign qualities were universally ascribed to certain jewels; and the amethyst ranked high among these precious talismans.

When this was disposed of, Gerard earnestly requested his friend to let the matter drop, since speaking of the other sex to him made him pine so for Margaret, and almost unmanned him with the thought that each step was taking him farther from her. "I am no general lover, Denys. There is room in my heart for one sweetheart, and for one friend. I am far from my dear mistress: and my friend, a few leagues more and I must lose him too. Oh let me drink thy friendship pure while I may, and not dilute with any of these stupid females."

"And shalt, honey-pot, and shalt," said Denys, kindly. "But as to my leaving thee at Remiremont, reckon thou not on that! For" (three consecutive oaths) "if I do. Nay, I shall propose to thee to stay forty-eight hours there while I kiss my mother and sisters, and the females generally, and on go you and I together to the sea."

"Denys! Denys!"

"Denys not me! 'Tis settled. Gainsay me not! or I'll go with thee to Rome. Why not? his holiness the Pope hath ever some little merry pleasant war toward, and a Burgundian soldier is still welcome in his ranks."

On this Gerard opened his heart. "Denys, ere I fell in with thee, I used often to halt on the road, unable to go farther: my puny heart so pulled me back: and then, after a short prayer to the saints for aid, would I rise and drag my most unwilling body onward. But since I joined company with thee, great is my courage. I have found the saying of the ancients true, that better is a bright comrade on the weary road than a horse litter; and, dear brother, when I do think of what we have done and suffered together! Savedst my life from the bear, and from yet more savage thieves; and even poor I did make shift to draw thee out of Rhine, and somehow loved thee double from that hour. How many ties tender and strong between us! Had I my will, I'd never, never, never, never, part with my Denys on this side the grave. Well-a-day! God his will be done."

"No, my will shall be done this time," shouted Denys. "Le bon Dieu has bigger fish to fry than you or me. I'll go with thee to Rome. There is my hand on it."

"Think what you say! 'Tis impossible. 'Tis too selfish of me."

"I tell thee, 'tis settled. No power can change me. At Remiremont I borrow ten pieces of my uncle, and on we go: 'tis fixed; irrevocable as fate."

They shook hands over it. Then Gerard said nothing, for his heart was too full: but he ran twice round his companion as he walked, then danced backwards in front of him, and finally took his hand, and so on they went hand-in-hand like sweethearts, till a company of mounted soldiers, about fifty in number, rose to sight on the brow of a hill.

"See the banner of Burgundy," said Denys, joyfully. "I shall look out for a comrade among these."

"How gorgeous is the standard in the sun," said Gerard; "and how brave are the leaders with velvet and feathers, and steel breastplates like glassy mirrors!"

When they came near enough to distinguish faces, Denys uttered an exclamation: "Why 'tis the Bastard of Burgundy, as I live. Nay, then; there is fighting a foot since he is out; a gallant leader, Gerard, rates his life no higher than a private soldier's, and a soldier's no higher than a tomtit's; and that is the captain for me."

"And see Denys, the very mules with their great brass frontlets and trappings seem proud to carry them; no wonder men itch to be soldiers;" and in the midst of this innocent admiration the troop came up with them.

"Halt," cried a stentorian voice. The troop halted. The Bastard of Burgundy bent his brow gloomily on Denys: "How now, arbalestrier, how comes it thy face is turned southward, when every good hand and heart is hurrying northward?"

Denys replied respectfully that he was going on leave, after some years of service, to see his kindred at Remiremont.

"Good. But this not the time for't, the duchy is disturbed. Ho! bring that dead soldier's mule to the front; and thou mount her and forward with us to Flanders."

"So please your highness," said Denys, firmly, "that may not be. My home is close at hand. I have not seen it these three years and, above all, I have this poor youth in charge; whom I may not, cannot leave, till I see him shipped for Rome."

"Dost bandy words with me?" said the chief, with amazement turning fast to wrath. "Art weary o' thy life? Let go the youth's hand, and into the saddle without more idle words."

Denys made no reply: but he held Gerard's hand the tighter, and looked defiance.

At this the bastard roared, "Jarnac, dismount six of thy archers, and shoot me this whitelivered cur dead where he stands--for an example."

The young Count de Jarnac, second in command, gave the order, and the men dismounted to execute it.

"Strip him naked," said the bastard, in the cold tone of military business, "and put his arms and accoutrements on the spare mule. We'll may be find some clown worthier to wear them."

Denys groaned aloud, "Am I to be shamed as well as slain?"

"Oh, nay! nay! nay!" cried Gerard, awaking from the stupor into which this thunderbolt of tyranny had thrown him. "He shall go with you on the instant. I'd liever part with him for ever than see a hair of his dear head harmed. Oh sir, oh, my lord, give a poor boy but a minute to bid his only friend farewell! he will go with you. I swear he shall go with you."

The stern leader nodded a cold contemptuous assent. "Thou, Jarnac, stay with them, and bring him on alive or dead.--Forward!" And he resumed his march, followed by all the band but the young count and six archers, one of whom held the spare mule.

Denys and Gerard gazed at one another haggardly. Oh! what a look!

And after this mute interchange of anguish, they spoke hurriedly, for the moments were flying by.

"Thou goest to Holland: thou knowest where she bides. Tell her all. She will be kind to thee for my sake."

"Oh, sorry tale that I shall carry her! For God's sake go back to the 'Tête d'Or.' I am mad."

"Hush! Let me think: have I nought to say to thee, Denys? my head! my head!"

"Ah! I have it. Make for the Rhine, Gerard! Strasbourg. 'Tis but a step. And down the current to Rotterdam. Margaret is there: I go thither. I'll tell her thou art coming. We shall all be together."

"My lads, haste ye, or you will get us into trouble," said the count firmly, but not harshly now.

"Oh, sir, one moment! one little moment!" panted Gerard.

"Cursed be the land I was born in; cursed be the race of man; and he that made them what they are," screamed Denys.

"Hush! Denys, hush! blaspheme not! oh, God, forgive him, he wots not what he says. Be patient, Denys,--be patient! though we meet no more on earth, let us meet in a better world, where no blasphemer may enter. To my heart, lost friend; for what are words now?" He held out his arms, and they locked one another in a close embrace. They kissed one another again and again, speechless, and the tears rained down their cheeks. And the Count Jarnac looked on amazed, but the rougher soldiers, to whom comrade was a sacred name, looked on with some pity in their hard faces. Then at a signal from Jarnac, with kind force and words of rude consolation, they almost lifted Denys on to the mule; and putting him in the middle of them, spurred after their leader. And Gerard ran wildly after (for the lane turned), to see the very last of him; and the last glimpse he caught, Denys was rocking to and fro on his mule, and tearing his hair out. But at this sight something rose in Gerard's throat so high, so high, he could run no more nor breathe, but gasped, and leaned against the snow-clad hedge, seizing it, and choking piteously.

The thorns ran into his hand.

* * * * *

After a bitter struggle he got his breath again: and now began to see his own misfortune. Yet not all at once to realize it, so sudden and numbing was the stroke. He staggered on, but scarce feeling or caring whither he was going: and every now and then he stopped, and his arms fell and his head sank on his chest: and he stood motionless: then he said to himself, "Can this thing be? This must be a dream. 'Tis scarce five minutes since we were so happy, walking handed, faring to Rome together, and we admired them and their gay banners and helmets--oh hearts of hell!"

* * * * *

All nature seemed to stare now as lonely as himself. Not a creature in sight. No colour but white. He, the ghost of his former self, wandered alone among the ghosts of trees, and fields, and hedges. Desolate! desolate! desolate! All was desolate.

He knelt and gathered a little snow. "Nay, I dream not; for this is snow: cold as the world's heart. It is bloody, too: what may that mean? Fool! 'tis from thy hand. I mind not the wound. Ay, I see: thorns. Welcome! kindly foes: I felt ye not, ye ran not into my heart. Ye are not cruel like men."

* * * * *

He had risen, and was dragging his leaden limbs along, when he heard horses' feet and gay voices behind him. He turned with a joyful but wild hope that the soldiers had relented and were bringing Denys back. But no: it was a gay cavalcade. A gentleman of rank and his favourites in velvet and furs and feathers; and four or five armed retainers in buff jerkins.

They swept gaily by.

Gerard never looked at them after they were gone by: certain gay shadows had come and passed: that was all. He was like one in a dream. But he was rudely wakened: suddenly a voice in front of him cried harshly, "Stand and deliver!" and there were three of the gentleman's servants in front of him. They had ridden back to rob him.

"How, ye false knaves," said he quite calmly: "would ye shame your noble master? He will hang ye to the nearest tree:" and with these words he drew his sword doggedly, and set his back to the hedge.

One of the men instantly levelled his petronel at him.

But another, less sanguinary, interposed. "Be not so hasty! And be not thou so mad! Look yonder!"

Gerard looked, and scarce a hundred yards off the nobleman and his friends had halted, and sat on their horses, looking at the lawless act, too proud to do their own dirty work, but not too proud to reap the fruit, and watch lest their agents should rob them of another man's money.

The milder servant then, a good-natured fellow, showed Gerard resistance was vain; reminded him common thieves often took the life as well as the purse, and assured him it cost a mint to be a gentleman; his master had lost money at play overnight, and was going to visit his leman, and so must take money where he saw it.

"Therefore, good youth, consider that we rob not for ourselves, and deliver us that fat purse at thy girdle without more ado, nor put us to the pain of slitting thy throat and taking it all the same."

"This knave is right," said Gerard calmly, aloud but to himself. "I ought not to fling away my life; Margaret would be so sorry. Take then the poor man's purse to the rich man's pouch; and with it this; tell him, I pray the Holy Trinity each coin in it may burn his hand, and freeze his heart, and blast his soul for ever. Begone and leave me to my sorrow!" He flung them the purse.

They rode away muttering; for his words pricked them a little; a very little: and he staggered on, penniless now as well as friendless, till he came to the edge of a wood. Then, though his heart could hardly feel this second blow, his judgment did; and he began to ask himself what was the use going further? He sat down on the hard road, and ran his nails into his hair and tried to think for the best; a task all the more difficult that a strange drowsiness was stealing over him. Rome he could never reach without money. Denys had said "go to Strasbourg, and down the Rhine home." He would obey Denys. But how get to Strasbourg without money?

Then suddenly seemed to ring in his ears--

"Gyf the world prove harsh and cold, Come back to the hedde of gold."

"And if I do I must go as her servant; I who am Margaret's. I am a-weary, a-weary. I will sleep, and dream all is as it was. Ah me, how happy were we an hour agone, we little knew how happy. There is a house: the owner well to do. What if I told him my wrong, and prayed his aid to retrieve my purse, and so to Rhine? Fool! is he not a man, like the rest? He would scorn me and trample me lower. Denys cursed the race of men. That will I never: but oh, I 'gin to loathe and dread them. Nay, here will I lie till sunset: then darkling creep into this rich man's barn, and take by stealth a draught of milk or a handful o' grain, to keep body and soul together. God, who hath seen the rich rob me, will peradventure forgive me. They say 'tis ill sleeping on the snow. Death steals on such sleepers with muffled feet and honey breath. But what can I? I am a-weary, a-weary. Shall this be the wood where lie the wolves yon old man spoke of? I must e'en trust them: they are not men; and I am so a-weary."

He crawled to the road-side, and stretched out his limbs on the snow, with a deep sigh.

"Ah tear not thine hair so! teareth my heart to see thee. "Mar--garet. Never see me more. Poor Mar--ga--ret."

And the too tender heart was still.

And the constant lover, and friend of antique mould, lay silent on the snow; in peril from the weather, in peril from wild beasts, in peril from hunger, friendless and penniless, in a strange land, and not half way to Rome.

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Chapter XXXIX

RUDE travel is enticing to us English. And so are its records; even though the adventurer be no pilgrim of love. And antique friendship has at least the interest of a fossil. Still, as the true centre of this story is in Holland, it is full time to return thither, and to those ordinary personages and incidents, whereof life has been mainly composed in all ages.

Jorian Ketel came to Peter's house to claim Margaret's promise; but Margaret was ill in bed, and Peter, on hearing his errand, affronted him and warned him off the premises, and one or two that stood by were for ducking him; for both father and daughter were favourites, and the whole story was in every mouth, and the Sevenbergens in that state of hot, undiscriminating, irritation which accompanies popular sympathy.

So Jorian Ketel went off in dudgeon, and repented him of his good deed. This sort of penitence is not rare, and has the merit of being sincere. Dierich Brower, who was discovered at "The Three Kings," making a chatterbox drunk in order to worm out of him the whereabouts of Martin Wittenhaagen, was actually taken and flung into a horse-pond, and threatened with worse usage, should he ever show his face in the burgh again; and finally, municipal jealousy being roused, the burgomaster of Sevenbergen sent a formal missive to the burgomaster of Tergou, reminding him he had overstepped the law, and requesting him to apply to the authorities of Sevenbergen on any future occasion when he might have a complaint, real or imaginary, against any of its townsfolk.

The wily Ghysbrecht, suppressing his rage at this remonstrance, sent back a civil message to say that the person he had followed to Sevenbergen was a Tergovan, one Gerard, and that he had stolen the town records: that Gerard having escaped into foreign parts, and probably taken the documents with him, the whole matter was at an end.

Thus he made a virtue of necessity. But in reality his calmness was but a veil: baffled at Sevenbergen, he turned his views elsewhere; he set his emissaries to learn from the family at Tergou whither Gerard had fled, and "to his infinite surprise" they did not know. This added to his uneasiness. It made him fear Gerard was only lurking in the neighborhood: he would make a certain discovery, and would come back and take a terrible revenge. From this time Dierich and others that were about him noticed a change for the worse in Ghysbrecht Van Swieten. He became a moody, irritable man. A dread lay on him. His eyes cast furtive glances, like one who expects a blow, and knows not from what quarter it is to come. Making others wretched had not made him happy. It seldom does.

The little family at Tergou, which, but for his violent interference, might in time have cemented its difference without banishing spem gregis to a distant land, wore still the same outward features, but within was no longer the simple happy family this tale opened with. Little Kate knew the share Cornelis and Sybrandt had in banishing Gerard, and though, for fear of making more mischief still, she never told her mother, yet there were times she shuddered at the bare sight of them, and blushed at their hypocritical regrets. Catherine, with a woman's vigilance, noticed this, and with a woman's subtlety said nothing, but quietly pondered it, and went on watching for more. The black sheep themselves, in their efforts to partake in the general gloom and sorrow, succeeded so far as to impose upon their father and Giles: but the demure satisfaction that lay at their bottom could not escape these feminine eyes--

"That, noting all, seem'd nought to note."

Thus mistrust and suspicion sat at the table, poor substitutes for Gerard's intelligent face, that had brightened the whole circle, unobserved till it was gone. As for the old hosier, his pride had been wounded by his son's disobedience, and so he bore stiffly up, and did his best never to mention Gerard's name; but underneath his Spartan cloak Nature might be seen tugging at his heartstrings. One anxiety he never affected to conceal. "If I but knew where the boy is, and that his life and health are in no danger, small would be my care," would he say; and then a deep sigh would follow. I cannot help thinking that if Gerard had opened the door just then, and walked in, there would have been many tears and embraces for him, and few reproaches, or none.

One thing took the old couple quite by surprise--publicity. Ere Gerard had been gone a week, his adventures were in every mouth; and, to make matters worse, the popular sympathy declared itself warmly on the side of the lovers, and against Gerard's cruel parents, and that old busy-body the burgomaster, "who must put his nose into a business that nowise concerned him."

* * * * *

"Mother," said Kate, "it is all over the town that Margaret is down with a fever--a burning fever; her father fears her sadly."

"Margaret? what Margaret?" inquired Catherine, with a treacherous assumption of calmness and indifference.

"Oh, mother! whom should I mean? Why Gerard's Margaret."

"Gerard's Margaret," screamed Catherine; "how dare you say such a word to me? And I rede you never mention that hussy's name in this house, that she has laid bare. She is the ruin of my poor boy, the flower of all my flock. She is the cause that he is not a holy priest in the midst of us, but is roaming the world, and I a desolate broken-hearted mother. There, do not cry, my girl, I do ill to speak harsh to you. But, oh, Kate! you know not what passes in a mother's heart. I bear up before you all; it behoves me swallow my fears: but at night I see him in my dreams and still some trouble or other near him: sometimes he is torn by wild beasts; other times he is in the hands of robbers, and their cruel knives uplifted to strike his poor pale face, that one should think would move a stone. Oh! when I remember that, while I sit here in comfort, perhaps my poor boy lies dead in some savage place: and all along of that girl: there, her very name is ratsbane to me. I tremble all over when I hear it."

"I'll not say anything, nor do anything to grieve you worse, mother," said Kate tenderly; but she sighed.

She whose name was so fiercely interdicted in this house, was much spoken of, and even pitied, elsewhere. All Sevenbergen was sorry for her, and the young men and maidens cast many a pitying glance, as they passed, at the little window where the beauty of the village lay "dying for love." In this familiar phrase they underrated her spirit and unselfishness. Gerard was not dead, and she was too loyal herself to doubt his constancy. Her father was dear to her and helpless; and, but for bodily weakness, all her love for Gerard would not have kept her from doing her duties, though she might have gone about them with drooping head and heavy heart. But physical and mental excitement had brought on an attack of fever so violent, that nothing but youth and constitution saved her. The malady left her at last, but in that terrible state of bodily weakness in which the patient feels life a burden.

Then it is that love and friendship by the bedside are mortal angels with comfort in their voices, and healing in their palms.

But this poor girl had to come back to life and vigour how she could. Many days she lay alone, and the heavy hours rolled like leaden waves over her. In her enfeebled state existence seemed a burden, and life a thing gone by. She could not try her best to get well. Gerard was gone. She had not him to get well for. Often she lay for hours quite still, with the tears welling gently out of her eyes.

One day, waking from an uneasy slumber, she found two women in her room. One was a servant, the other by the deep fur on her collar and sleeves was a person of consideration: a narrow band of silvery hair, being spared by her coiffure, showed her to be past the age when women of sense conceal their years. The looks of both were kind and friendly. Margaret tried to raise herself in the bed, but the old lady placed a hand very gently on her.

"Lie still, sweetheart; we come not here to put you about, but to comfort you, God willing. Now cheer up a bit, and tell us, first, who think you we are?"

"Nay, madam, I know you, though I never saw you before: you are the demoiselle Van Eyck, and this is Reicht Heynes. Gerard has oft spoken of you, and of your goodness to him. Madam, he has no friend like you near him now," and at this thought she lay back and the tears welled out of her eyes in a moment.

The good-natured Reicht Heynes began to cry for company; but her mistress scolded her. "Well, you are a pretty one for a sick-room," said she: and she put out a world of innocent art to cheer the patient: and not without some little success. An old woman, that has seen life and all its troubles, is a sovereign blessing by a sorrowful young woman's side. She knows what to say, and what to avoid. She knows how to soothe her and interest her. Ere she had been there a hour, she had Margaret's head lying on her shoulder instead of on the pillow, and Margaret's soft eyes dwelling on her with gentle gratitude.

"Ah! this is hair," said the old lady, running her fingers through it. "Come and look at it, Reicht!"

Reicht came and handled it, and praised it unaffectedly. The poor girl that owned it was not quite out of the reach of flattery; owning doubtless to not being dead.

"In sooth, madam, I did use to think it hideous: but he praised it, and ever since then I have been almost vain of it, saints forgive me. You know how foolish those are that love."

"They are greater fools that don't," said the old lady, sharply.

Margaret opened her lovely eyes, and looked at her for her meaning.

This was only the first of many visits. In fact either Margaret Van Eyck or Reicht came nearly every day until their patient was convalescent: and she improved rapidly under their hands. Reicht attributed this principally to certain nourishing dishes she prepared in Peter's kitchen: but Margaret herself thought more of the kind words and eyes that kept telling her she had friends to live for.

* * * * *

Martin Wittenhaagen went straight to Rotterdam, to take the bull by the horns. The bull was a biped, with a crown for horns. It was Philip the Good, duke of this, earl of that, lord of the other. Arrived at Rotterdam, Martin found the court was at Ghent. To Ghent he went, and sought an audience, but was put off and baffled by lacqueys and pages. So he threw himself in his sovereign's way out hunting, and, contrary to all court precedents, commenced the conversation--by roaring rustily for mercy.

"Why, where is the peril, man?" said the duke, looking all round and laughing.

"Grace for an old soldier hunted down by burghers!"

Now kings differ in character like other folk; but there is one trait they have in common; they are mightily inclined to be affable to men of very low estate. These do not vie with them in anything whatever, so jealousy cannot creep in; and they amuse them by their bluntness and novelty, and refresh the poor things with a touch of nature--a rarity in courts. So Philip the Good reined in his horse and gave Martin almost a tête-à-tête, and Martin reminded him of a certain battle-field where he had received an arrow intended for his sovereign. The duke remembered the incident perfectly, and was graciously pleased to take a cheerful view of it. He could afford to, not having been the one hit. Then Martin told his majesty of Gerard's first capture in the church, his imprisonment in the tower, and the manœuvre by which they got him out, and all the details of the hunt; and, whether he told it better than I have, or the duke had not heard so many good stories as you have, certain it is that sovereign got so wrapt up in it, that, when a number of courtiers came galloping up and interrupted Martin, he swore like a costermonger, and threatened, only half in jest, to cut off the next head that should come between him and a good story: and when Martin had done, he cried out:--

"St. Luke! what sport goeth on in this mine earldom, ay! in my own woods, and I see it not. You base fellows have all the luck." And he was indignant at the partiality of Fortune. "Lo you now! this was a man-hunt," said he. "I never had the luck to be at a man-hunt."

"My luck was none so great," replied Martin bluntly; "I was on the wrong side of the dogs' noses."

"Ah! so you were: I forgot that." And royalty was more reconciled to its lot. "What would you then?"

"A free pardon, your highness, for myself and Gerard."

"For what?"

"For prison-breaking."

"Go to: the bird will fly from the cage. 'Tis instinct. Besides, coop a young man up for loving a young woman? These burgomasters must be void of common sense. What else?"

"For striking down the burgomaster."

"Oh, the hunted boar will turn to bay. 'Tis his right: and I hold him less than man that grudges it him. What else?"

"For killing of the bloodhounds."

The duke's countenance fell.

"'Twas their life or mine," said Martin eagerly.

"Ay! but I can't have my bloodhounds, my beautiful bloodhounds, sacrificed to----"

"No, no, no! They were not your dogs."

"Whose dogs, then?"

"The ranger's."

"Oh. Well, I am very sorry for him, but, as I was saying, I can't have my old soldiers sacrificed to his bloodhounds. Thou shalt have thy free pardon."

"And poor Gerard."

"And poor Gerard too, for thy sake. And more, tell thou this burgomaster his doings mislike me: this is to set up for a king, not a burgomaster. I'll have no kings in Holland but one. Bid him be more humble: or by St. Jude I'll hang him before his own door, as I hanged the burgomaster of what's the name, some town or other in Flanders it was: no, 'twas somewhere in Brabant--no matter--I hanged him, I remember that much--for oppressing poor folk."

The duke then beckoned his chancellor, a pursy old fellow that rode like a sack, and bade him write out a free pardon for Martin and one Gerard.

This precious document was drawn up in form, and signed next day, and Martin hastened home with it.

Margaret had left her bed some days, and was sitting pale and pensive by the fireside, when he burst in, waving the parchment, and crying, "A free pardon, girl, for Gerard as well as me! Send for him back when you will; all the burgomasters on earth daren't lay a finger on him."

She flushed all over with joy, and her hands trembled with eagerness as she took the parchment and devoured it with her eyes, and kissed it again and again, and flung her arms round Martin's neck, and kissed him. When she was calmer, she told him Heaven had raised her up a friend in the dame Van Eyck. "And I would fain consult her on this good news: but I have not strength to walk so far."

"What need to walk? There is my mule."

"Your mule, Martin?"

The old soldier or professional pillager laughed, and confessed he had got so used to her, that he forgot at times Ghysbrecht had a prior claim. To-morrow he would turn her into the burgomaster's yard, but to-night she should carry Margaret to Tergou.

It was nearly dusk; so Margaret ventured, and about seven in the evening she astonished and gladdened her new but ardent friend, by arriving at her house with unwonted roses on her cheeks, and Gerard's pardon in her bosom.

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