But with this grapple body to body the last of Bertrand’s doubts vanished. This strange foe, whoever he might be, was plainly flesh and blood like himself, and he now began to suspect that he had to do with neither demon nor ghost, but simply with a madman.
Nerved by this thought, the hero put forth all his strength, and, bringing into play a dexterous trip that he had learned long ago, bore his formidable enemy clear off his feet, and hurled him to the earth with crushing force, falling right upon him.
As the unknown lay stunned and motionless, Du Guesclin, bending over him, unbarred his visor, eager to see what features it hid. But when the stranger’s face lay bare before him, fully revealed in the glorious moonlight, the Breton started as if stung, and muttered tremulously—
“Heaven help us! Can this be indeed he?”
Late that night the host of the one small inn at St. Barnabé was startled by a succession of thundering strokes on his barred door, and an imperious summons, in a loud, harsh voice, to open at once. Nor was he much reassured, when he did at last open the door (which seemed likely to be beaten down about his ears if he did not), to see an armed man on foot leading a horse on which lay another man seemingly dead or sorely wounded.
But the name given by the new-comer was a passport to the heart of every Frenchman, and a handful of silver set at rest any lingering doubts of the worthy host, who declared himself ready to “do aught that might pleasure the worshipful Messire Bertrand du Guesclin.”
The senseless man was carefully undressed and laid in a small upper room, where Bertrand watched by his side all that night, still uncertain if the crazed, haggard, ghastly sufferer before him could really be the same man whom he had last seen in the pride of youth and vigour and beauty, with all the fairest gifts of life within his reach.
Toward morning the sick man began to mutter uneasily, and then poured forth a flood of wild and rambling talk, amid which came words that, broken and confused as they were, thrilled Bertrand’s bold heart with horror.
But as he listened, stronger and stronger grew the conviction that his wild guess was right, and that this distracted sufferer was really the man he thought; and when at last the rising sun streamed into the sick-room, lighting up the helpless man’s sunken face—that face, ravaged and ruined as it was, retained enough of its former self to change his suspicions into certainty.
“Alured de Claremont!” cried he. “Is it thus that we meet again?”