A thrill of joy ran up and down every nerve in my body. For a while I stood staring at the soldiers passing before us, but with eyes that did not see. A world of new thoughts was seething in my brain. Then a fresh notion came to me.

“Just to think how I have wasted my time,” I said slyly to my captor. “I was sent here to find him. I might as well have remained at home.”

He turned on me with a knowing look.

“You weren’t sent here for any purpose of the kind,” he answered with as much cunning as he could show. “You came to learn of this army that is passing down the valley of the Loire. You were to find out the numbers of it, where it was heading, how soon it would be ready to strike. In one word you were sent here as a spy!”

If I had had the strength, I would have felled him with a blow. Yet for all that I now realized that every syllable he uttered was the naked truth. If I had been told in the beginning that I was to act as a sneak, (as he said “a spy”) I would have refused boldly and I was sent in blindness to follow a false trail. I was duped into a position that was contrary to my ideas of manliness and honor.

I had information that the Black Prince would give half a kingdom to know. The cruelties of De Marsac and the men whom he had set on my heels were as humiliating as ever I had suffered. His trickery and deceit were of the kind that no man of self-respect would practice. It was his aim to drive my brother and me from the home which our family had enjoyed for generations. All these things galled me and drove me to a kind of desperation. The thought came slowly to me to be sure, but while I stood gazing on the soldiers whose mission was to destroy the only friend that Normandy had at this time—the Black Prince—I resolved that I would go no further with my captor than force compelled me. I would watch every opportunity. I would play the fox to the last degree. When the time came I would try once more to escape. If I could get through that circle of men who guarded the Valley of the Loire I would risk my very life to inform the Black Prince of the plans that were ripening against him, for I knew that if I did, I would be saving my home in Normandy.

CHAPTER XVIII
ESCAPE!

My chance came three days later. During this time we had traveled a long way. When the sun was up we plodded along footsore and weary. At night we lay down wherever we were able to find a soft place in the grass or under the protection of a tree. The inns were crowded, not only with soldiers but with all the riff-raff of humanity. Wandering jugglers and mountebanks, sleight-of-hand artists, men with bears on ropes, quack doctors of medicine who sold simples made of the roots of marvelous trees,—all these and more lined the highway. Their booths were set up alongside the inns. They barked and called to the passers-by. They were the followers of an army who sapped the soldiers of their hard earned pay.

As for myself I was almost sick of life. My companion was in the sourest of moods. He growled at his ill luck and laid the blame for it at my door. He took every occasion to make me miserable, now by threats, again by actual brutality. He gave me only the coarsest fare which he could purchase in the inns. And to make me the more miserable he chose the daintiest morsels for himself and taunted me while he shoved them down his throat.