so fairly spoken withal. I trust we are not bewitched, or the sport of
spirits. Who art thou, brave boy? and whence comest thou? How comes it
that thou, being, as it seems, a native of these parts, speakest so well
a strange language?"

"It was our mother's tongue," answered Gaston, speaking nevertheless
guardedly, for he had been warned by the Father not to be too ready to
tell his name and parentage to all the world. "We are bound for
Bordeaux, and thence to England, to seek our mother's kindred, as she
bid us ere she died."

"If that be so, then let us join forces and travel on together," said he
whom they had thus succoured, a man well mounted on a fine horse, and
with a mounted servant beside him, so that the brothers took him for a
person of quality, which indeed he was, as they were soon to learn.
"There is safety in numbers, and especially so in these inhospitable
forest tracks, where so many perils beset the traveller. I have lost my
other stout fellows in the windings of the wood, and it were safer to
travel four than two. Riding is slow work in this gloom. I trow ye will
have no trouble in keeping pace with our good chargers."

The hardy Gascon boys certainly found no difficulty about that. Gaston
walked beside the bridle rein of the master, whilst Raymond chatted
amicably to the man, whose broad Scotch accent puzzled him a little, and
led in time to stories of Border warfare, and to the tale of
Bannockburn, told from a Scotchman's point of view; to all of which the
boy listened with eager interest. As for Gaston, he was hearing of the
King's Court, the gay tourneys, the gallant feats of arms at home and
abroad which characterized the reign of the Third Edward. The lad drank
in every item of intelligence, asking such pertinent questions, and