The dusk of evening was falling as Sir Gervaise raised himself from the couch upon which he had been restlessly tossing ever since he had been carried in. His head was swathed in bandages, and the light of the single lamp showed a face pale beneath its sunburn, in which a pair of fierce black eyes burned with an unnatural brightness.
"I have waited in suspense long enough," he muttered to himself. Then, in a louder key, he called to his esquire who was in attendance upon him.
"Arnaud, I have business that I must transact this night. Fetch me hither, then, the varlet James Baulch, and then betake thyself to thy tent. Stay, first fill up my cup, for my head still throbs consumedly from the blow that trickster Chartris gave me."
The esquire obeyed, and in a minute the wounded knight was alone. Freed from the restraint of his esquire's presence, Sir Gervaise groaned aloud with the pain of his bruised and swollen head, and muttered savagely to himself what sounded like threats and imprecations against his successful foe and also the varlet James, who seemed somehow to have incurred his especial displeasure.
Presently the man arrived escorted by the esquire, who seemed to look somewhat askance at his charge. He glanced significantly at his master as he was about to leave the tent, and, interpreting the look, the knight cried as he scowled savagely at the man: "Yes, Arnaud, remain outside within call. I may require thy services."
Arnaud bowed and retired, and the knight, raising himself, not without difficulty, into a sitting posture and placing a dagger ready to his hand, beckoned the man to approach.
"So thou hast played me false, James Baulch, murderer and vagabond?" he cried in a voice thick with rage. "Thou, whom I have but to lift a finger to consign to the gibbet--thou hast dared to lie to me."
The man cowered before the knight's pallid face and gleaming eyes. "There is some mistake," he stammered, "I----"
"Aye--thou art right," cried the knight savagely, "'tis the mistake I made when, with a trumped-up tale, I snatched thee from the sheriff's men. I had better have let thee hang and moulder--but 'tis not yet too late. The arm of the law is strong and swift even in Gascony, and on the word of a knight thy shrift----"
"My lord! My lord!" cried the man, grovelling in terror on the floor. "I swear there is some mistake. With mine own eyes at dawn this morning I saw Sir John, bound and helpless, lying at the bottom of a wagon. I rode straight hither, and he who fought with thee must be some other. My lord, it must be so."