“Ah, madame, it shall be one of the deepest, I assure you.”
Tinteniac was able to laugh.
“You flatter me, Fleming. We shared the fame at Mivoie.”
“Sire, madame your wife would break my spear at this last notch if she could.”
His eyes challenged Tiphaïne, and she did not deny him.
To the man lying in the shadow of the tree these words came like the blows of a passing bell. It seemed to him that he had heard all now that he could ever know, and that the silver swan of Rennes would be but a memory and a lost desire. He lay very still in the wet grass, looking at Tiphaïne with a dull aching of the heart, as a man might look at a lost love who has risen to trouble him beyond the waters of the river of death.
XXX
Croquart yawned behind his arm. He rose, threw a bundle of sticks upon the fire, and called Tête Bois aside towards the horses. The free lance was a little bowlegged, brown-faced Gascon, very tough and wiry, with eyes like a hawk’s and a sharp nose and beard.
“Hello! can you keep awake to-night?” and Croquart shook him by the shoulder. “We are in the way of earning a lapful of crowns. I will give you a thousand crowns if we bring the Sieur de Tinteniac to Morlaix.”
Tête Bois’s eyes lost their sleepiness and twinkled like the eyes of a rat.