Ae gude chief wi’ his gear and his glaumrie;
Lords on the bed and dukes in the aumrie;
There was a king’s son kiver’d o’er wi’ raggies,
A’ for to dinner on our Bessy’s haggies.”
—Bessy’s Haggies.
Château-Foix, riding close beside his cousin, and uneasily watching his set mouth, suddenly put out a hand and gripped him by the arm as he lurched forward in the saddle. “We will stop at the first house we see,” he said briefly; and Louis, recovering himself, nodded without speaking.
It was the afternoon of the next day. All morning, under a hot sun, the travellers had ridden through the green, rolling, wooded Maine country at a pace regulated alike by the capabilities of their steeds and by Saint-Ermay’s ebbing strength. It was an hour or more now since that pace had dropped to a walk; several hours since Louis had ceased from converse, and had jogged on silently with eyes fixed ahead. Latterly he had been devoting his energies to the bare task of keeping in the saddle—and all this with amazing pluck and good temper. But he was beaten at last. Gilbert recognised it for a curious phenomenon that he could feel for the young man beside him, in the same flash of thought, so real an admiration, so sharp an anxiety, and so horrible a hatred. . . .
They moved forward another hundred yards, the Marquis steadying him as they went, and in a bend of the road came on a cottage. Château-Foix checked both horses at the door. “I am going to ask for shelter,” he said in his cousin’s ear. “Can you manage to stay where you are—no, I had better help you to dismount.”
Louis made a motion of the head to be taken for assent, and in another moment or two Gilbert had dragged his swaying form out of the saddle, and, with his arm round him, was knocking vigorously at the cottage door.
Hasty and feeble steps were heard to approach it, and after some fumbling with bolts and bars a wrinkled old woman looked out. “You cannot come in,” she said, before the Marquis had time to formulate his request.