"He speaks as do the others from the cage. How come you to speak as we do?"
"I am from Sercq. It is part of England."
"I never heard of it. Why did they cage you?"
"I was prisoner on a French ship which they captured. I let them believe me French rather than be pressed on board a King's ship."
"Right! Blight him!"
That long rest made men of us again. Our host had little to say to us except that the King was mad, and we concluded that on that subject he was none too sane himself, though in other matters we had no fault to find with him.
We got directions for our guidance out of him during the day, and as soon as it was dark he set off with us across the marshes, and led us at last on to more trustworthy ground and told us how to go. We gave him money and hearty thanks, and shook him by the hand and went on our way. The last words we heard from him, out of the darkness, were the same as we heard first in the darkness—"Blight him! Blight him! Blight him!" and if they did another old man no harm they certainly seemed to afford great satisfaction to this one.
All that night we walked steadily eastward, passing through sleeping villages and by sleeping farmhouses, and meeting none who showed any desire to question us. In the early morning I bought bread and cheese from a sleepy wife at a little shop in a village that was just waking up, and we ate as we walked, and slept in a haystack till late in the afternoon. We tramped again all night, and long before daylight we smelt salt water, and when the sun rose we were sitting on a cliff watching it come up out of the sea.