jealousy which must, as all long-sighted men well knew, break into open
warfare before long. It was of matters nearer to their own hearts that
the brothers spoke as they sauntered through the woodland paths
together; and Gaston's blue eyes flashed fire as he paused and tossed
back the tangled curls from his broad brow.

"It is our birthright -- our land, our castle. Do they not all say that
in old days it was a De Brocas, not a Navailles, that ruled there?
Father Anselm hath told us a thousand times how the English King issued
mandate after mandate bidding him give up his ill-gotten gains, and
restore the lands of his rival; and yet he failed to do it. I trow had I
been in the place of our grandsire, I would not so tamely have sat down
beneath so great an affront. I would have fought to the last drop of my
blood to enforce my rights, and win back my lost inheritance Brother,
why should not thou and I do that one day? Canst thou be content for
ever with this tame life with honest Jean and Margot at the mill? Are we
the sons of peasants? Does their blood run in our veins? Raymond, thou
art as old as I -- thou hast lived as long. Canst thou remember our dead
mother? Canst thou remember her last charge to us?"

Raymond had nodded his head at the first question; he nodded it again
now, a glance of strange eagerness stealing into his dark eyes. Although
the two youths wore the dress of peasant boys -- suits of undyed
homespun only very slightly finer in make than was common in those parts
-- they spoke the English tongue, and spoke it with purity and ease. It
needed no trained eye to see that it was something more than peasant
blood that ran in their veins, albeit the peasant race of Gascony in
those days was perhaps the freest, the finest, the most independent in
the whole civilized world.