“Come, I am a Breton man; you need not run from me. I want food and a place by your fire.”
They came forward grudgingly, one to hold his horse, the other to help him from the saddle. So stiff and faint was he that Bertrand staggered when he touched the earth, and sank down with a groan beside the fire.
The two men stood staring at him stupidly, and it was the girl whose instinct answered to the appeal. She knelt down by Bertrand, to find that he had fainted, his face showing gray and haggard through the mezail of his bassinet. She called to the two men, and they brought her a stone flask full of cider, and helped her to unfasten the laces of Bertrand’s helmet. The girl sat down and lifted Bertrand’s head into her lap. She poured some of the cider between his lips, the woman in her pitying him and taking charge of his wounded manhood. She was still bending over him when Bertrand recovered consciousness, and he felt her hands smoothing back his hair. Rough and toil-lined as her face was, there was something soft and gentle in the eyes. Above him hung this peasant woman’s face—one warm touch against the stolid darkness of the forest. And what did Bertrand do but break down and weep.
The girl held his head in her lap awhile, wonderingly and in silence, till he struggled up, and, looking round him shamefacedly, asked surlily for food. They gave him coarse bread, swine’s flesh, and more cider. He ate ravenously, saying nothing, the peasants watching him, awed by a something they did not understand. Presently Bertrand pointed to his horse; the men caught his meaning, and went to unsaddle the beast and give him water. The girl had turned away, and was throwing sticks upon the fire.
Bertrand called to her when he had finished the last crust that they had given him.
“Child, come hither.”
She turned and stood silent before him, while Bertrand fumbled for the purse he carried at his belt.
“Your name; tell it me.”
“Marie, lording—Marie of the Marshes.”
Bertrand threw her money, with a twist of the hand.