The moon had by this time long been down, and the lights of dawn were beginning to spread bright and strong in the east, and to gleam on the bosom of a small lake, on the verge of which they had been riding for a short space of time. This lake lay in the midst of a wide plain, scattered over with single trees, groves and thickets, but which might be yet termed open, so that objects began to be discerned with sufficient accuracy. Quentin cast his eye on the person whom he rode beside, and under the shadow of a slouched overspreading hat, which resembled the sombrero of a Spanish peasant, he recognised the facetious features of the same Petit Andre whose fingers, not long since, had, in concert with those of his lugubrious brother, Trois Eschelles, been so unpleasantly active about his throat.—Impelled by aversion, not altogether unmixed with fear (for in his own country the executioner is regarded with almost superstitious horror), which his late narrow escape had not diminished, Durward instinctively moved his horse's head to the right, and pressing him at the same time with the spur, made a demi-volte, which separated him eight feet from his hateful companion.
“Ho, ho, ho, ho!” exclaimed Petit Andre, “by Our Lady of the Grave, our young soldier remembers us of old. What! comrade, you bear no malice, I trust?—every one wins his bread in this country. No man need be ashamed of having come through my hands, for I will do my work with any that ever tied a living weight to a dead tree.—And God hath given me grace to be such a merry fellow withal.—Ha! ha! ha!—I could tell you such jests I have cracked between the foot of a ladder and the top of the gallows, that, by my halidome, I have been obliged to do my job rather hastily, for fear the fellows should die with laughing, and so shame my mystery!”
As he thus spoke he edged his horse sideways to regain the interval which the Scot had left between them, saying, at the same time, “Come, Seignior Archer, let there be no unkindness betwixt us!—For my part, I always do my duty without malice, and with a light heart, and I never love a man better than when I have put my scant of wind collar about his neck, to dub him Knight of the order of Saint Patibularius [patibulum, a gibbet], as the Provost's Chaplain, the worthy Father Vaconeldiablo [possibly Baco (Bacchus) el Diablo (the Devil)], is wont to call the Patron Saint of the Provostry.”
“Keep back, thou wretched object!” exclaimed Quentin, as the finisher of the law again sought to approach him closer, “or I shall be tempted to teach you the distance that should be betwixt men of honour and such an outcast.”
“La you there, how hot you are!” said the fellow, “had you said men of honesty, there had been some savour of truth in it, but for men of honour, good lack, I have to deal with them every day, as nearly and closely as I was about to do business with you.—But peace be with you, and keep your company to yourself. I would have bestowed a flagon of Auvernat upon you to wash away every unkindness—-but 't is like you scorn my courtesy.—Well. Be as churlish as you list—I never quarrel with my customers—my jerry come tumbles, my merry dancers, my little playfellows, as Jacques Butcher says to his lambs—those in fine, who, like your seigniorship, have H. E. M. P. written on their foreheads.—No, no, let them use me as they list, they shall have my good service at last—and yourself shall see, when you next come under Petit Andre's hands, that he knows how to forgive an injury.”
So saying, and summing up the whole with a provoking wink, and such an interjectional tchick as men quicken a dull horse with, Petit Andre drew off to the other side of the path, and left the youth to digest the taunts he had treated him with, as his proud Scottish stomach best might. A strong desire had Quentin to have belaboured him while the staff of his lance could hold together, but he put a restraint on his passion, recollecting that a brawl with such a character could be creditable at no time or place, and that a quarrel of any kind, on the present occasion, would be a breach of duty, and might involve the most perilous consequences. He therefore swallowed his wrath at the ill timed and professional jokes of Mons. Petit Andre, and contented himself with devoutly hoping that they had not reached the ears of his fair charge, on which they could not be supposed to make an impression in favour of himself, as one obnoxious to such sarcasms. But he was speedily roused from such thoughts by the cry of both the ladies at once, to “Look back—look back!—For the love of Heaven look yourself, and us—we are pursued!”
Quentin hastily looked back, and saw that two armed men were in fact following them, and riding at such a pace as must soon bring them up with their party. “It can,” he said, “be only some of the Provostry making their rounds in the forest.—Do thou look,” he said to Petit Andre, “and see what they may be.”
Petit Andre obeyed, and rolling himself jocosely in the saddle after he had made his observations, replied, “These, fair sir, are neither your comrades nor mine—neither Archers nor Marshals men—for I think they wear helmets, with visors lowered, and gorgets of the same.—A plague upon these gorgets of all other pieces of armour!—I have fumbled with them an hour before I could undo the rivets.”
“Do you, gracious ladies,” said Durward, without attending to Petit Andre, “ride forward—not so fast as to raise an opinion of your being in flight, and yet fast enough to avail yourself of the impediment which I shall presently place between you and these men who follow us.”
The Countess Isabelle looked to their guide, and then whispered to her aunt, who spoke to Quentin thus: “We have confidence in your care, fair Archer, and will rather abide the risk of whatever may chance in your company, than we will go onward with that man, whose mien is, we think, of no good augury.”