"I am the father of Mazurec's wife."
"You, poor man?" cried the hostess with pity. "Oh! I regret to have been rude to you. Pardon me, poor father. Alas, what have you come here for?"
"For my daughter," answered William; and he added with a frightful smile: "She will be now returned to me; the night is over; the infamous dues are paid."
"My God! My God!" rejoined Alison, unable to repress her tears. "And when we think that poor Mazurec is a prisoner at the castle, and that this morning, before mass, he is to make the 'amende honorable' on his knees before the Sire of Nointel—"
"He! Is he to be subjected to that further indignity?" cried Jocelyn, interrupting his hostess. "And what is he to apologize for?"
"Alas, Sir champion!" answered Alison, "I have not yet told you the end of the adventure. While Mazurec was being taken to prison, the bailiff went for Aveline at the vicarage and brought her to the castle. She resisted her seigneur with all her strength. He then laughed in her face and said: 'Ho! you resist me! Very well. I shall now have the pleasure of exercising my right by judicial decree. It will be a good lesson to Jacques Bonhomme.' He thereupon had the bride taken to a cell, and lodged a complaint against her in the court of the seneschal at Beauvais. Seeing that the law recognizes the right of a seigneur over his female vassals, the court gave its decree accordingly. It is in the name of justice that the wretched Aveline was violated last night by our seigneur; it is in the name of justice that Mazurec is sentenced to beg the pardon of his seigneur for having intended to oppose him in the exercise of his seigniorial right; it is in the name of justice that, after this public expiation, Mazurec is to fight the thief of a knight."
"Aye," put in William Caillet, clenching his fists; "Mazurec is to fight on foot and armed with a stick against his robber, covered with iron ... Mazurec will be vanquished and killed, or, if he survive, will be drowned. I shall try to fish out his body and bury him in some hole ... Then I shall take away my daughter ... She is to be returned to me this morning, and who knows but in nine months I may be the grandfather of a noble brat!" After a short pause the peasant resumed with a sinister and chilling smile: "Oh! If that child should live ... if it should live...." But he did not finish his sentence. For a moment he remained silent; then, laying his horny right hand upon the shoulder of Jocelyn, he approached the young man's ear and added in a low voice: "Shortly ago you said an end must be put to these horrors, they call for blood!"
"Yes, and I say so again. These horrors cry for vengeance! They cry for the death and destruction of our oppressors!"
"He who says that aloud is a man who will act," replied the serf fastening his small, savage and piercing eyes upon the champion. "If the time for action arrives, remember William Caillet ... of the village of Cramoisy, near Clermont."
"I shall not forget your name," Jocelyn returned in a low voice to Caillet, and clasped his hand. "The hour of justice and vengeance may sound sooner than you think, especially if there are many serfs like you!"