At that renowned name, the bandits eyed each other doubtfully, as if hardly able to believe that the greatest warrior of the age stood among them in the guise of a simple knight-errant. But one glance at the harsh but striking features which (as the great captain often said in jest) no man who had once seen them could ever forget, carried conviction to all; and in a moment the savage gang were pressing round him with shouts of rough welcome, the Black Wolf himself being the foremost.
“Let him go free, captain!” cried the robbers; “it were sin and shame to take ransom from him!”
“What talk ye of ransom, lads?” said the chief, with a gruff chuckle. “Here is no question of any man’s ransom but my own; for it is not he who is my captive, but I who am his.”
“What! did he overcome thee in single fight?” cried a dozen voices at once, in blank amazement; for never before had the dreaded Black Wolf been conquered, and his wild followers had never dreamed that he could be.
“Ay, that did he!” said the Wolf, with a thoroughly characteristic enjoyment of his conqueror’s prowess. “Marry, if ye doubt it, try him yourselves, any two of ye together; I’ll warrant he will find work for both!”
But the robbers seemed quite satisfied with his testimony, and made no offer to put it to the proof.
“Hark ye, comrades,” broke in Du Guesclin, “one of ye fetch me quickly a rough cloth or a wisp of straw, that I may rub down my good horse, which hath been sore toiled this day; and then, if it be supper-time with ye here, I would gladly eat a bit in your good company, for I am as hungry as a wolf in winter.”
The blunt heartiness of the great soldier’s address was just to the taste of these rough men, on whom fine words and courtly phrases would have been thrown away. His caring for his good steed, too, before thinking of his own needs, was what the rudest of them could appreciate; and in a trice he was seated among them as an honoured guest, as much at home in this den of thieves as at the brilliant Court of Brittany.
“Now, lads,” cried he, as this strange picnic ended, “in requital of your good cheer, I will tell ye of a goodly sport that I have devised, which ye are the very men to carry out. With a few score tall fellows like you to aid me, I doubt not to bring it to a prosperous issue; and if I do, it will be a jest for the old wives of Bretagne to tell their grand-children for many a day after we are dead and gone.”
His project was plainly received by the outlaws as a first-rate joke; for, as he expounded it, his words were half-drowned by peal after peal of laughter; and, ere he ended, all the band (the Black Wolf included) had vowed to stand by him through thick and thin.