“Just saved yourself, boy,” cried Francis; “for if you dare to say you know what till we are back again in my own fair France your punishment will be short and sharp.” He gave Saint Simon a merry look as he spoke, and then rode gently on, sweeping the landscape with his eye and making comments from time to time. “Better and better,” he said pleasantly. “My brother Henry has a goodly land. All this woodland landscape forms a pleasant place. Hah! but he should see my hills and forests about Rouen, with the silver river winding through the vale. But that is far away, and this is near, and it will pass if we do not meet the dangers that woman prophesied upon our road.”
They rode on in silence for a time, just at a gentle amble, the King giving a shrewd look now and again at his young companion to see how he bore the motion of the horse.
It was a glorious evening, and they saw the sun sink like a huge orange globe; the soft, warm, summer evening glow seeming to rise and spread around them from the west.
There was a sweet delicious fragrance in the air, and the soft English landscape began gradually to darken from green to purple, and then to deeper shades, while as the glow in the west disappeared the eastern sky grew more pearly; but the indications of the rising moon were not as yet.
“Hah!” cried the King at last, speaking as if to two companions of his own rank enjoying with him a summer evening ride. “Here have I been so taken up with our late adventures that I have had no thought of what is to come. Our saddles are comfortable, and after that pleasant dinner and my nap I feel ready for anything. But there will come a time when we shall want to think of supper and of bed, for we can’t go on riding all night even if we are undisturbed. Now then, Saint Simon, what have you to say?”
The young man slowly shook his head.
“Bah!” cried the King. “What a dumb dog you are! And I know nothing of the way. I begin to feel that we ought to have had old Leoni with us, after all. He has maps, and knowledge always ready in his brain; and he speaks these islanders’ language better than they can themselves. But he would only have been in the way, and I wanted freedom. Here, Denis, boy, what have you to say? Where shall we sleep to-night?”
“I had scarcely time, sir, to mark down our course, and the only place I can recall is one called Hurstham.”
“Ah!” cried the King. “What of that?”
“I know nothing, sir, except that there is a good road over hills and through forests, and that there is a castle there.”