brown legs, with black hairs thick on them, were naked. He was a huge,
dark man, and when he turned and stared at me, I thought that, among all
men of the Church and in religion whom I had ever beheld, he was the
foulest and most fierce to look upon. He had an ugly, murderous visage,
fell eyes and keen, and a right long nose, hooked like a falcon's. The
eyes in his head shone like swords, and of all eyes of man I ever saw,
his were the most piercing and most terrible. On his back he carried, as
I noticed at the first, what I never saw on a cordelier's back before, or
on any but his since--an arbalest, and he had bolts enough in his bag,
the feathers showing above.

"Pax vobiscum," he cried, in a loud, grating voice, as he saw me, and
scrambled out to shore.

"Et cum anima tua," I answered.

"Nom de Dieu!" he said, "you have bottomed my Latin already, that is
scarce so deep as the river here. My malison on them that broke the
bridge!" Then he looked me over fiercely.

"Burgundy or Armagnac?" he asked.

I thought the question strange, as a traveller would scarce care to
pronounce for Burgundy in that country. But this was a man who would
dare anything, so I deemed it better to answer that I was a Scot, and, so
far, of neither party.

"Tug-mutton, wine-sack!" he said, these being two of many ill names which
the French gave our countrymen; for, of all men, the French are least
grateful to us, who, under Heaven and the Maid, have set their King on