“I have not that pleasure,” laughed the troubadour. “Ought I to know him?”
“Not if you can help it,” said Guy, “if he is the same Gastard whom I heard of in France five years ago. Didst ever hear of sweating gold?”
“It sounds like the tale of King Midas,” Ranulph chuckled. “How, exactly, does it happen?”
“It does not happen,” Guy answered, “except an itching palm be in the treasury. There was a clerk in Paris who took a cask full of gold pieces and sand, which being rolled about, gold more or less was ground off by the sand without great change in the look of the coin. Then, the coins being taken out in a sieve and the sand mixed with water, the gold dust sank to the bottom and was melted and sold, while the coins were paid on the nail. I had as lief get money by paring a cheese, but that’s as you look at it. If I have to travel with this fellow I should like to know that there is nothing unusual about the chest our gold is in. I cannot keep awake all the time, and there is enough in that chest to make a dozen men rich. I knew a rascal once who made a hole in the bottom of a chest, stole most of the coin, and then nailed the chest to the floor to hide its emptiness.”
Ranulph laughed sympathetically. “You do see the wrong side of mankind when you have anything to do with treasure.”
“Unless you know something of it,” returned Guy grimly, “you won’t be allowed to handle treasure more than once.”
“True,” admitted Ranulph. “Why not take turns watching the chest?”
“The others who are bound for the Abbey have gone on. I had to wait for the Chancellor, and then I saw Gastard.”
“Ask the potter,” said Ranulph at last. “He can be trusted, and he may know of some one who has a chest that will defy your clerk. I suppose you don’t expect him to steal it, chest and all?”
“No; I have had dealings with the captain of the guard before. He is Sir Stephen Giffard, a West-country knight, and he will send men who can be trusted. The trouble is, you see, that I am not sure about Gastard. But he could not object to the secure packing of the gold.”