"Yes, let us drink to the hope of meeting my children."
I emptied my cup. The wine seemed excellent.
"I made you a promise," began the dealer, "I shall keep my promise. You told me that the chariot which held your family on the day of the battle of Vannes was harnessed to four black oxen?"
"Yes."
"Four black oxen, with a little white mark in the middle of their foreheads?"
"Yes, all four were brothers, and alike," I answered, unable to repress a sigh at the thought of that fine yoke, raised on our own meadows, which my father and mother had always admired.
"Those oxen carried on their necks leathern collars trimmed with little brass bells like this one?" continued the "horse-dealer," fumbling in his pocket, out of which he drew a little brass bell that he held up before me.
I recognized it. It had been made by my brother Mikael, the armorer, and bore the mark with which he stamped all the articles of his fashioning.
"This bell comes from our oxen," I answered. "Will you give it to me? It has no value."
"What," asked the dealer, laughing, "do you want to hang bells at your neck too, friend Bull? It is your right. Here, take it. I brought it only to know from you if the yoke it came from was of your family's chariot."