The Cloister and the Hearth: A Tale of the Middle Ages. Charles Reade Reade

bah! I did it out of politeness," said the Frenchman. "It was to please thee, little one. C'est égal: 'twas well and orderly prayed; and edified me to the core, while it lasted. A bishop had scarce handled the matter better: so now our evensong being sung, and the saints enlisted with us—marchons."

      Ere they had taken two steps, he stopped. "By-the-by, the cub!"

      "Oh, no, no!" cried Gerard.

      "You are right. It is late: we have lost time climbing trees, and tumbling off 'em, and swooning, and vomiting, and praying, and the brute is heavy to carry; and, now I think on't, we shall have papa after it next; these bears make such a coil about an odd cub: what is this? You are wounded! you are wounded!"

      "Not I."

      "He is wounded, miserable that I am."

      "Be calm, Denys. I am not touched, I feel no pain anywhere."

      "You? you only feel when another is hurt," cried Denys, with great emotion and throwing himself on his knees he examined Gerard's leg with glistening eyes.

      "Quick! quick! before it stiffens," he cried: and hurried him on.

      "Who makes the coil about nothing now?" inquired Gerard composedly.

      Denys's reply was a very indirect one.

      "Be pleased to note," said he, "that I have a bad heart. You were man enough to save my life, yet I must sneer at you, a novice in war; was not I a novice once myself? then you fainted from a wound, and I thought you swooned for fear, and called you a milksop. Briefly, I have a bad tongue and a bad heart."

      "Denys!"

      "Plait-il?"

      "You lie."

      "You are very good to say so, little one, and I am eternally obliged to you," mumbled the remorseful Denys.

      Ere they had walked many furlongs, the muscles of the wounded leg contracted and stiffened, till presently Gerard could only just put his toe to the ground, and that with great pain.

      At last he could bear it no longer.

      "Let me lie down and die," he groaned, "for this is intolerable."

      Denys represented that it was afternoon, and the nights were now frosty, and cold and hunger ill companions, and that it would be unreasonable to lose heart, a certain great personage being notoriously defunct. So Gerard leaned upon his axe and hobbled on, but presently he gave in all of a sudden, and sank helpless in the road.

      Denys drew him aside into the wood, and to his surprise gave him his cross-bow and bolts, enjoining him strictly to lie quiet, and if any ill-looking fellows should find him out and come to him, to bid them keep aloof; and, should they refuse, to shoot them dead at twenty paces. "Honest men keep the path, and, knaves in a wood none but fools do parley with them." With this he snatched up Gerard's axe and set off running, not, as Gerard expected, toward Dusseldorf, but on the road they had come.

      Gerard lay aching and smarting, and to him Rome, that seemed so near at starting, looked far, far, off, now that he was two hundred miles nearer it. But soon all his thoughts turned Sevenbergen-wards. How sweet it would be one day to hold Margaret's hand and tell her all he had gone through for her! The very thought of it, and her, soothed him, and in the midst of pain and irritation of the nerves he lay resigned, and sweetly, though faintly, smiling.

      He had lain thus more than two hours, when suddenly there were shouts, and the next moment something struck a tree hard by and quivered in it.

      He looked, it was an arrow.

      He started to his feet. Several missiles rattled among the boughs, and the wood echoed with battle-cries. Whence they came he could not tell, for noises in these huge woods are so reverberated that a stranger is always at fault as to their whereabout; but they seemed to fill the whole air. Presently there was a lull: then he heard the fierce galloping of hoofs; and still louder shouts and cries arose, mingled with shrieks and groans, and above all strange and terrible sounds like fierce claps of thunder, bellowing loud, and then dying off in cracking echoes; and red tongues of flame shot out ever and anon among the trees, and clouds of sulphureous smoke came drifting over his head: and all was still.

      Gerard was struck with awe. "What will become of Denys?" he cried. "Oh why did you leave me? Oh Denys, my friend, my friend!"

      Just before sunset Denys returned, almost sinking under a hairy bundle. It was the bear's skin.

      Gerard welcomed him with a burst of joy that astonished him.

      "I thought never to see you again, dear Denys: were you in the battle?"

      "No. What battle?"

      "The bloody battle of men, or fiends, that raged in the wood a while agone;" and with this he described it to the life, and more fully than I have done.

      Denys patted him indulgently on the back.

      "It is well:" said he, "thou are a good limner; and fever is a great spur to the imagination. One day I lay in a cart-shed with a cracked skull, and saw two hosts manœuvre and fight a good hour on eight feet square, the which I did fairly describe to my comrade in due order, only not so gorgeously as thou, for want of book learning."

      "What then you believe me not? when I tell you the arrows whizzed over my head, and the combatants shouted, and—"

      "May the foul fiends fly away with me if I believe a word of it."

      Gerard took his arm and quietly pointed to a tree close by.

      "Why it looks like—it is—a broad arrow as I live:" and he went close and looked up at it.

      "It came out of the battle. I heard it, and saw it."

      "An English arrow."

      "How know you that?"

      "Marry, by its length. The English bowmen draw the bow to the ear, others only to the right breast. Hence the English loose a three-foot shaft, and this is one of them, perdition seize them. Well, if this is not glamour there has been a trifle of a battle: and if there has been a battle in so ridiculous a place for a battle as this, why then 'tis no business of mine, for my duke hath no quarrel hereabouts; so let's to bed," said the professional: and with this he scraped together a heap of leaves, and made Gerard lie on it, his axe by his side: he then lay down beside him with one hand on his arbalest, and drew the bearskin over them, hair inward. They were soon as warm as toast and fast asleep.

      But long before the dawn Gerard woke his comrade.

      "What shall I do, Denys, I die of famine?"

      "Do? why go to sleep again incontinent: qui dort dîne."

      "But I tell you I am too hungry to sleep," snapped Gerard.

      "Let us march then," replied Denys, with paternal indulgence.

      He had a brief paroxysm of yawns; then made a small bundle of bears' ears, rolling them up in a strip of the skin, cut for the purpose; and they took the road.

      Gerard leaned on his axe, and, propped by Denys on the other side, hobbled along not without sighs.

      "I hate pain," said Gerard, viciously.

      "Therein you show judgment," replied papa, smoothly.

      It was a clear starlight night; and soon the moon rising revealed the end of the wood at no great distance; a pleasant sight, since Dusseldorf they knew was but a short league further.

      At the edge of the wood they came upon something so mysterious that they stopped to gaze at it, before going up to it. Two white pillars rose in the air, distant a few paces from each other; and between them stood many figures, that looked like human forms.

      "I go no further till I know what this is," said Gerard, in an agitated whisper; "are they effigies of the saints, for men to pray to on the road? or live robbers waiting to shoot down honest travellers? nay, living men they cannot be, for they stand on nothing