"I am Jean Peuquoy, my Lord."
"Well, Jean Peuquoy, what ransom may we ask for you?"
"Oh, I am going to dicker with you, Monseigneur! Trader against trader, as they say. Oh, you may knit your brows! I am not proud, my Lord, and in my own opinion I am not worth ten livres."
"Nonsense!" said Lord Grey, scornfully. "You shall pay a hundred livres; that is hardly as much as I promised the archer who brought you here."
"A hundred livres! So be it, my Lord, if you value me so high," retorted the shrewd captain of the bowmen. "But you don't want a hundred livres cash, do you?"
"What! Haven't you that petty sum, even?"
"I had it, my Lord," said Peuquoy, "but I gave it all to the poor and the wounded during the siege."
"But you have friends, surely, or kinsmen?"
"Friends? Ah, we mustn't rely too much upon friends, my Lord. And kinsmen? No, I have none: my wife died childless, and I have no brother; only a cousin—"
"Well, and this cousin?" asked Lord Grey, with some signs of losing patience.