With that I told them how the "brigands" (for so they now began to call
such reivers as Brother Thomas) were, to my shame, and maugre my head,
for a time of my own company. And I told them of the bushment that they
laid to trap travellers, and how I had striven to give a warning, and how
they bound me and gagged me, and of the strange girl's voice that spoke
through the night of "mes Freres de Paradis," and of that golden "boyn"
faring in the dark, that I thought I saw, and of the words spoken by the
blind man and the soldier, concerning some vision which affrayed them, I
know not what.

At this tale the girl Elliot, crossing herself very devoutly, cried
aloud--

"O father, did I not tell you so? This holy thing can have been no other
but that blessed Maiden, guarded by the dear saints in form visible, whom
this gentleman, for the sin of keeping evil company, was not given the
grace to see. Oh, come, let us mount and ride to Chinon, for already she
is within the walls; had we not ridden forth so early, we must have heard
tell of it."

It seemed something hard to me that I was to have no grace to behold what
others, and they assuredly much more sinful men than myself, had been
permitted to look upon, if this damsel was right in that she said. And
how could any man, were he himself a saint, see what was passing by, when
his head was turned the other way? Howbeit, she called me a gentleman,
as indeed I had professed myself to be, and this I saw, that her passion
of anger against me was spent, as then, and gone by, like a shower of
April.