The Man in Black. Weyman Stanley John

grey horse?"

      The stranger inclined his head.

      "Nay, there you are wrong!" the host retorted briskly. "I'm hanged if he has! For I rode the horse this morning, and it went as well and quietly as ever in its life."

      "Send and see," the tall man answered.

      The serving girl, obeying a nod, went off reluctantly to the stable, while her master, casting a look of misliking at his guest, walked uneasily to the window. In a moment the girl came back, her face white. "The grey is in a fit," she cried, keeping the whole width of the room between her and the stranger. "It is sweating and staggering."

      The landlord, with an oath, ran off to see, and in a minute the appearance of an excited group in the square under the window showed that the thing was known. The traveller took no notice of this, however, nor of the curious and reverential glances which the womenfolk, huddled about the door of the room, cast at him. He walked up and down the room with his eyes lowered.

      The landlord came back presently, his face black as thunder. "It has got the staggers," he said resentfully.

      "It has got the devil," the stranger answered coldly. "I knew it was in the house when I entered. If you doubt me, I will prove it."

      "Ay?" said the landlord stubbornly.

      The man in black went to his saddle-bag, which had been brought up and laid in a corner, and took out a shallow glass bowl, curiously embossed with a cross and some mystic symbols. "Go to the church there," he said, "and fill this with holy water."

      The host took it unwillingly, and went on his strange errand. While he was away the astrologer opened the window, and looked out idly. When he saw the other returning, he gave the order "Lead out the horse."

      There was a brief delay, but presently two stablemen, with a little posse of wondering attendants, partly urged and partly led out a handsome grey horse. The poor animal trembled and hung its head, but with some difficulty was brought under the window. Now and again a sharp spasm convulsed its limbs, and scattered the spectators right and left.

      Solomon Nôtredame leaned out of the window. In his left hand he held the bowl, in his right a small brush. "If this beast is sick with any earthly sickness," he cried in a deep solemn voice, audible across the square, "or with such as earthly skill can cure, then let this holy water do it no harm, but refresh it. But if it be possessed by the devil, and given up to the powers of darkness and to the enemy of man for ever and ever to do his will and pleasure, then let these drops burn and consume it as with fire. Amen! Amen!"

      With the last word he sprinkled the horse. The effect was magical. The animal reared up, as if it had been furiously spurred, and plunged so violently that the men who held it were dragged this way and that. The crowd fled every way; but not so quickly but that a hundred eyes had seen the horse smoke where the water fell on it. Moreover, when they cautiously approached it, the hair in two or three places was found to be burned off!

      The magician turned gravely from the window. "I wish to eat," he said.

      None of the servants, however, would come into the room or serve him, and the landlord, trembling, set the board with his own hands and waited on him. Mine host had begun by doubting and suspecting, but, simple man! his scepticism was not proof against the holy water trial and his wife's terror. By-and-by, with a sidelong glance at his guest, he faltered the question: What should he do with the horse?

      The man in black looked solemn. "Whoever mounts it will die within the year," he said.

      "I will shoot it," the landlord replied, shuddering.

      "The devil will pass into one of the other horses," was the answer.

      "Then," said the miserable innkeeper, "perhaps your honour would accept it?"

      "God forbid!" the astrologer answered. And that frightened the other more than all the rest. "But if you can find at any time," the wizard continued, "a beggar-boy with black hair and blue eyes, who does not know his father's name, he may take the horse and break the spell. So I read the signs."

      The landlord cried out that such a person was not to be met with in a lifetime. But before he had well finished his sentence a shrill voice called through the keyhole that there was such a boy in the yard at that moment, offering poultry for sale.

      "In God's name, then, give him the horse!" the stranger said. "Bid him take it to Rouen, and at every running water he comes to say a paternoster and sprinkle its tail. So he may escape, and you, too. I know no other way."

      The trembling innkeeper said he would do that, and did it. And so, when the man in black rode into Rouen the next evening, he did not ride alone. He was attended at a respectful distance by a good-looking page clad in sable velvet, and mounted on a handsome grey horse.

      CHAPTER III

      MAN AND WIFE

      It is a pleasant thing to be warmly clad and to lie softly, and at night to be in shelter and in the day to eat and drink. But all these things may be dearly bought, and so the boy Jehan de Bault soon found. He was no longer beaten, chained, or starved; he lay in a truckle bed instead of a stable; the work he had to do was of the lightest. But he paid for all in fears-in an ever-present, abiding, mastering fear of the man behind whom he rode: who never scolded, never rated, nor even struck him, but whose lightest word-and much more, his long silences-filled the lad with dread and awe unspeakable. Something sinister in the man's face, all found; but to Jehan, who never doubted his dark powers, and who shrank from his eye, and flinched at his voice, and cowered when he spoke, there was a cold malevolence in the face, an evil knowledge, that made the boy's flesh creep and chained his soul with dread.

      The astrologer saw this, and revelled in it, and went about to increase it after a fashion of his own. Hearing the boy, on an occasion when he had turned to him suddenly, ejaculate "Oh, Dieu!" he said, with a dreadful smile, "You should not say that! Do you know why?"

      The boy's face grew a shade paler, but he did not speak.

      "Ask me why! Say, 'Why not?'"

      "Why not?" Jehan muttered. He would have given the world to avert his eyes, but he could not.

      "Because you have sold yourself to the devil!" the other hissed. "Others may say it; you may not. What is the use? You have sold yourself-body, soul, and spirit. You came of your own accord, and climbed on the black horse. And now," he continued, in a tone which always compelled obedience, "answer my questions. What is your name?"

      "Jehan de Bault," the boy whispered, shivering and shuddering.

      "Louder!"

      "Jehan de Bault."

      "Repeat the story you told at the fair."

      "I am Jehan de Bault, Seigneur of-I know not where, and Lord of seventeen lordships in the County of Perigord, of a most noble and puissant family, possessing the High Justice, the Middle, and the Low. In my veins runs the blood of Roland, and of my forefathers were three marshals of France. I stand here, the last of my race; in token whereof may God preserve my mother, the King, France, and this Province."

      "Ha! In the County of Perigord!" the astrologer said, with a sudden lightening of his heavy brows. "You have remembered that?"

      "Yes. I heard the word at Fécamp."

      "And all that is true?"

      "Yes."

      "Who taught it you?"

      "I do not know." The boy's face, in its straining, was painful to see.

      "What is the first thing you can remember?"

      "A house in a wood."

      "Can you remember your father?"

      "No."

      "Your mother?"

      "No-yes-I am not sure."

      "Umph! Were you stolen by gypsies?"

      "I do not know."

      "Or sold by your father's steward?"

      "I do not know."

      "How long were you with the man from whom I took you?"

      "I