trusty Raoul goes ever before me with a cudgel to drive them from my path.'
'Yet they have souls, fair lady, they have souls!' murmured, the chaplain, a white-haired man, with a weary, patient face.
'So I have heard you tell them,' said the lord of the castle; 'and for myself, father, though I am a true son of holy Church, yet I think that you were better employed in saying your mass, and in teaching the children of my men-at-arms, than in going over the countryside to put ideas in these folks' heads which would never have been there but for you. I have heard that you have said to them that their souls are as good as ours, and that it is likely that in another life they may stand as high as the oldest blood of Auvergne. For my part, I believe that there are so many worthy knights and gallant gentlemen in heaven, who know how such things should be arranged, that there is little fear that we shall find ourselves mixed up with base roturiers and swineherds. Tell your beads, father, and con your psalter, but do not come between me and those whom the king has given to me?'
'God help them!' cried the old priest. 'A higher King than yours has given them to me, and I tell you here in your own castle hall, Sir Tristram de Rochefort, that you have sinned deeply in your dealings with these poor folk, and that the hour will come, and may even now be at hand, when God's hand will be heavy upon you for what you have done.' He rose as he spoke, and walked slowly from the room.
'Pest take him!' cried the French knight. 'Now what is a man to do with a priest, Sir Bertrand?—for one can neither fight him like a man nor coax him like a woman.'
'Ah, Sir Bertrand knows, the naughty one!' cried the Lady Rochefort. 'Have we not all heard how he went to Avignon and squeezed fifty thousand crowns out of the Pope!'
'Ma foi!' said Sir Nigel, looking with a mixture of horror and admiration at Du Guesclin. 'Did not your heart sink within you? Were you not smitten with fears? Have you not felt a curse hang over you?'
