As for Jasto himself, he rode silently among the baggage men, having been given a horse captured from the brabancois.
For once in his life, he was thoroughly ashamed of himself, and two things weighed upon his mind. In the midst of his struggles with the robbers, and when he had felt certain that they would overpower him and take him back to Michol, by whom he would be cruelly punished and perhaps slain, he had heard that shrill young voice calling for help for Jasto.
"And yet," he said to himself, "I am following that boy about and keeping in his company, solely that I may, some day, have the chance of claiming pay for freeing him from the cotereaux, to which bad company I should have gone back this day if it had not been for him. For had he not called for help none would have come to me. I owe him my freedom now, and as he is worth surely twice as much as I am, I will charge his friends but half the sum I had intended. And I shall think about the other half. But a poor man must not let his gratitude hinder his fortune. I shall think of that too.
"But as for Sir Charles, who has saved my life to-day, and who was ever of old a good master to me, I shall never deceive him more. I shall either tell him boldly that I can not write a letter any more than he can himself, or I shall learn to read and write. And that last is what I shall surely do, if I can find monk or clerk to teach me and he ask not more pay than I have money."
With these comforting resolutions Jasto's face brightened up, and raising his head, as if he felt like a man again, he left the company of the baggage, and rode forward among the men-at-arms.
That night our travelers rested in a village, and the next day they came to the river Yonne, along the banks of which their road lay for a great part of the rest of their journey.
They passed through Sens, a large town, in which there lived a bishop, to whom their errand might have been made known had not there been reason to fear that such an application might injure the cause of the Countess more than it would benefit it, and then they crossed the Seine and passed through Melun and several small towns and villages; and, late in the afternoon of the fourth day, they rode into Paris, with dusty clothes and tired horses, but with hearts full of hope.
CHAPTER XIII.
IT must not be supposed that the officers of the Inquisition and the monks of the monastery which, as has been mentioned before, stood a few miles from Viteau, were all this time ignorant of the fact that, when the Countess of Viteau fled from her home, she took refuge in the castle of the Count de Barran.