"So be it, then," said Gerard. "We will go together as far as Rhine, and
God go with us both!"

"Amen!" said Denys, and lifted up his cap.

The pair trudged manfully on, and Denys enlivened the weary way. He
chattered about battles and sieges, and things which were new to Gerard;
and he was one of those who _make_ little incidents wherever they go. He
passed nobody without addressing him. "They don't understand it, but it
wakes them up," said he. But, whenever they fell in with a monk or
priest, he pulled a long face and sought the reverend father's blessing,
and fearlessly poured out on him floods of German words in such order as
not to produce a single German sentence. He doffed his cap to every
woman, high or low, he caught sight of, and complimented her in his
native tongue, well adapted to such matters; and at each carrion crow or
magpie down came his crossbow, and he would go a furlong off the road to
circumvent it; and indeed he did shoot one old crow with laudable
neatness, and carried it to the nearest hen-roost, and there slipped in
and sat it upon a nest. "The good-wife will say, 'Alack, here is
Beelzebub a hatching of my eggs.'"

But the time came for parting and Denys, with a letter from Gerard to
Margaret Brandt, reached Tergon, and found Eli and Catherine and gave
them news of their son. "Many a weary league we trode together," said
Denys. "Never were truer comrades; never will be while earth shall last.
First I left my route a bit to be with him, then he his to be with me.
We talked of Sevenbergen and Tergon a thousand times, and of all in this
house. We had our troubles on the road, but battling them together made
them light. I saved his life from a bear, he mine in the Rhine; for he
swims like a duck, and I like a hod o' bricks; and we saved one