"Well, very well," replied the young cavalier, faintly; "we have changed stations since we met."
"You will find me ready," answered Albert Maurice, "to follow the good example you then set me, and to give you back freedom, for the freedom you then gave me."
Hugh de Mortmar shook his head mournfully, and cast his eyes on his stiff and rigid limbs, as if to express the impossibility of his accepting the proffered liberation.
"Fear not, fear not!" said Albert Maurice, in reply to this mute language. "Fear not; in two or three days you will be able to use your limbs as freely as ever, and I will find means to remove from them all other thraldom."
"But my father," exclaimed Hugh de Mortmar. "Tell me, I beseech you, tell me! Is he safe? Is he unhurt?"
"Your father!" repeated Albert Maurice in some surprise--"your father?"
"Yes, yes!" cried the prisoner, raising himself as well as he could upon his arm, "my father, the Duke of Gueldres! Is he safe? Is he unhurt? I struck him down before I knew him; but I do not think he was injured."
"No, no," replied the young citizen, "the duke is safe and well. But this, indeed, is a strange tale. I do not comprehend you well, I fear," he added; somewhat inclined to believe that the injuries the prisoner had received had rendered him delirious. "Can the Duke of Gueldres be your father? I never heard that he had more than one child, who was slain, they say, by some of the cruel soldiers of the late Duke of Burgundy's father, when Adolphus of Gueldres himself was taken near Namur. I remember all the circumstances; for there was many an event occurred about that time which impressed the whole story more deeply on my memory than other things that have happened since. I was then a boy, travelling with my uncle through the forest of Hannut, and we had been at Namur not three days before."
"Ha! and were you that boy?" demanded the young cavalier. "I remember you well. You fell into the hands of the free companions with whom I then was, and were sent on safely by them, and by my father's noble cousin, the Lord of Hannut. Mind you the boy who joined you, with good Matthew Gournay, when you were sitting round the freebooter's fire in the forest?"
"Well, perfectly well," replied Albert Maurice.