“I haven’t anything to give,” said Marie Josephine, a quiver in her voice.
“You offered your life, but the sacrifice was not needed,” the shepherd answered her.
“I am the last Lisle now and I have nothing to give,” Lisle said in the humble way which was new to him.
“You would have given your life a hundred times over, had there been a way. You have given a prayer that is better than all this,” Dian answered him.
“Whom does it belong to?” asked Jean, who was delighted with the rows of little bags inside the odd old chest.
Dian put his hand again on Lisle’s shoulder.
“It belongs to this Lisle,” he said. Then he reached down and picked up a dark-stained piece of paper. There were letters on the paper, burnt into the parchment with the sharp end of a stick. They were so curiously worded that Lisle had to study them, when Dian handed him the paper, before he could make them out. They were in French, but of the old language. After a moment of silence Lisle read very slowly:
“In the hour of need thou shall of this treasure give to the creatures who have the sorest want. Keep to thine own that for thy bread. Give of the rest, not to thyself, but to thy brother!”
There was silence there in the depths of the earth after Lisle had read from the parchment. It seemed to stay with them all the evening. It seemed almost as though it spoke to them. “Give of the rest, not to thyself, but to thy brother.”
Long ago Dian had gone over the bags with the old comte. He and Lisle now put away, in the bottom of the chest, the quaint old coins in their faded bags, handling them tenderly as though they loved them. They decided to take two bags of the more modern money with them.