recover, though nightly returns of fever still kept him very weak.

"The Pyrenean breezes would make me another man," said he, one evening,
when Eustace had helped him to the front of the tent, where he might
enjoy the coolness which began to succeed the sultry heat of the day.

"I hear," said Eustace, "that we are to return as soon as the Prince
can be moved. He is weary of waiting till this dog of a Spaniard
will perform his contract."

"By my faith," said d'Aubricour, "I believe the butcherly rogue means
to cancel his debts by the death of all his creditors. I would give
my share of the pay, were it twenty times more, for one gust of the
mountain air of my own hills."

"Which way lies your home, Gaston?" asked Eustace. "Near the pass by
which we crossed?"

"No; more to the west. My home, call you it? You would marvel to
see what it is now. A shattered, fire-scathed keep; the wolf's den in
earnest, it may be. It is all that is left of the Castle d'Albricorte."

How?" exclaimed Eustace. "What brought this desolation?"

"Heard you never my story?" said Gaston. "Mayhap not. You are
fresh in the camp, and it is no recent news, nor do men question
much whence their comrades come. Well, Albricorte was always a
noted house for courage, and my father, Baron Beranger, not a whit
behind his ancestors. He called himself a liegeman of England,
because England was farthest off, and least likely to give him any