Into the quietly merry circle came Jean-aux-Choux. He brought great news.
"The Bearnais has beaten Mayenne and bought the others!" he cried; "France will be a quiet land for many days—no place for Jean-aux-Choux. So I will hie me to the Prince of Orange, and there seek some good fighting for the Religion! Will you come with me, Francis Agnew, as in the days before the Bartholomew?"
But the worn man shook his head.
"I have been too long at the oar, Jean-aux-Choux!" he said. "Moreover, I am too old. When I see these young folk settled in that which the Bearnais hath promised them, I have a thought to win back and lay this tired tickle of bones in good Wigtonshire mould—somewhere within sough of the Back Shore of the Solway, where the waves will sing me to sleep at nights! Come back with me, John Stirling, and we will eat oaten cakes and tell old tales!"
"Not I," cried Jean-aux-Choux, "I go where the fighting is—where the weapon-work is to be done. I shall die on a battle-field—or on the scaffold. But on the shore of mine own land will I not set a foot, unless"—he paused a moment as if the more surely to launch his phrase of denunciation—"unless the Woman-clad-in-Scarlet, Mother of Abominations, returns thither in her power! Then and then alone will John Stirling (called Jean-aux-Choux) tread Scottish earth."
So, without a good-bye, Jean-aux-Choux went out into the night and the storm, his great piked staff thrust before him, and the firelight from the sparkling olive-roots gleaming red on the brass-bound sheath of the dagger which had been wet with the blood of Guise.
Then the Professor, looking across at the lovers, who had drawn together in the semi-obscurity, murmured to himself, "Which is better—to love or to go lonely? Which is happier—John d'Albret—or I? Who hath better served the Lord—Valentine the cloistered Carmelite, or Jean-aux-Choux the Calvinist, gone forth into the world to fight after his fashion the fight of faith?"
Then aloud he said, speaking so suddenly that every one in the comfortable kitchen started, "Who art thou that judgest another man's servant? To his own master he standeth or falleth!"
Without, Jean-aux-Choux faced the storm and was happy. Within, the lovers sat hand in hand in a great peace, and were happy also. And in her narrow cell, who shall say that Valentine la Niña had not also some happiness? She had given her life for another.