But ere any one could speak, a clamour of voices was heard outside, and a hurried trampling of feet.
“Ha!” cried the old baron, frowning, “who dares make such ado in my castle? By St. Yves of Bretagne, I will take some order with these roisterers, be they who they may!”
But as he sprang up to make good his threat, the hall door flew open, and in came the grey-haired gate-porter.
“Woe is me, my lord, that I should bring you evil tidings! A woodman hath come hither but now, having found in the forest Messire Bertrand’s hunting-knife lying by a slain wolf; but of my young lord himself saw he nought!”
“Oh, my son, my son!” wailed Lady Euphrasie, whose motherly heart awoke too late.
“Peace with thy whining, wench!” said her husband, angrily; “this is no time for tears and cries. Where is this woodman, fellow? Bring him hither straightway.”
A moment later a sturdy peasant, in soiled leather jerkin and leggings, slouched bashfully into the hall, and, bowing awkwardly to his lord, laid at the latter’s feet the well-known hunting-knife and the dead wolf, at whose huge carcass the old Du Guesclin (a sportsman to his very finger-tips) looked admiringly, even in the height of his anxiety and grief.
“If the boy hath done such a deed unaided, he is my true son, uncomely though he be. And methinks he is yet alive, for no wounded man could deal a blow like this; and had there been other wolves there, they could not have borne him off so clean but what some trace of him would be left. What ho! without there! Go quickly forth, knaves, some six of ye, with spear and wood-knife, and let this fellow guide ye to the spot where the wolf was slain; and whoso brings tidings of my son shall have for his guerdon as many silver pennies as he can grasp in one hand.”
The men obeyed with a will, for this sullen, ill-favoured, awkward lad, while hated and despised by his equals, had always been strangely popular with those beneath him; and there was not one of his father’s men-at-arms who would not have gladly perilled life and limb for his sake.
But this time there was no need to do either, for hardly had the searchers gone half a mile when they met the missing boy himself, and bore him home in triumph.