Bertrand rode out hawking early on the forenoon of the third day at La BelliÈre, leaving TiphaÏne and her father seated together under the Vicomte’s favorite pear-tree in the orchard. He had chosen a gerfalcon in the La BelliÈre mews, and taken the path towards a marsh where there was a heron passage some three miles from the chÂteau. He rode alone, with the bird belled and hooded on his wrist, more intent, perhaps, in gaining solitude than on seeing the falcon make a flight. For the heart of a man in love is a world within itself, where the green pastures and deep woods are tinged with a melancholy like the perfume of wild thyme in the green deeps of June.

But there was more than mere melancholy in Bertrand’s heart that morning, for the truth was plain to him as the blue sweep of the summer sky that the old man at La BelliÈre lived in the spirit on the eyes and lips of TiphaÏne, his child. The vision of yesterday shone ever before Bertrand’s mind, the vision of Stephen Raguenel’s face glowing with a reflected light, a light falling from TiphaÏne’s face, with its great eyes and splendid sheen of hair. Nor would Bertrand have grudged the old man this, or have reproached TiphaÏne for having a woman’s heart. Men look for piety in priests, patience in a philosopher, tenderness and loyalty in a daughter towards her sire. The true man desires to find a beautiful completeness in the creature of his heart’s creation. He would rather starve his own desires than see her fail in some sacred duty towards her soul.

But the Vicomte had given Bertrand food for reflection that same morning, nor had the food seemed particularly sweet.

“I am remembering, Messire Bertrand,” he had said, “that there are other hearts in Brittany more near of sympathy to you than ours. We must not keep you at La BelliÈre.”

A broad hint, forsooth, and Bertrand had read more in the old man’s restless eyes than the Vicomte’s tongue had suffered him to say. Half an hour’s talk with TiphaÏne at the open window! Stephen Raguenel had even grudged him that, and betrayed by a flash of senile peevishness that the younger man’s presence cast a shadow across the narrowing path of age.

Human, most human, and yet there was something pitiful to Bertrand in the old man’s sensitiveness, his readiness to resent any sharing of TiphaÏne’s thoughts. No doubt she was all that was left to him, his pearl of great price, which he would suffer no other man to handle. In this life the services of a friend may be too soon forgotten when the clash of interests rouses the armed ego. Gratitude is the most volatile of all the sentiments. Return an old man his lost purse, and it is but natural that he should knit his brows when the self-same purse is coveted by the very mortal who returned it.

Yet to one who has suffered in the cause of others a grudging and suspicious spirit is as a north wind in the midst of June. It was for this reason that Bertrand’s heart was bitter in him that morning, not because TiphaÏne loved her father, but because the old man grudged her even a friend. In the past the lord of La BelliÈre would have laughed at such a notion of tyranny. But sorrow and the slackening of the fibres of the heart can change the temper of the happiest mind.

The forenoon had gone when Bertrand turned homeward to La BelliÈre without having so much as slipped the hood or jesses. Yet even though he had won nothing by the falcon’s talons, he had come by a decision to leave La BelliÈre on the morrow.

Not in the best of tempers, he came suddenly upon two shabby-looking devils squatting side by side under a wayside cross. They were sharing half a brown loaf and a bottle of cider, the jaws of both munching energetically with that stolid emphasis that betrays the philosophic and worldly mendicant. A couple of rusty swords and bucklers lay on the grass at the men’s feet. One of the pair was leathery and tall; the other, buxom about the body, with a face that matched the frayed scarlet of his coat.

They sighted Bertrand, falcon on wrist, and stared at him casually as though considering whether he was a gentleman likely to disburse a coin. There was an abrupt slackening of the masticatory muscles. Two pairs of eyes were startled by the apparition. The lean man bolted a large mouthful of bread and started up with a shout that sent Bertrand’s horse swerving across the road.

The loaf and the cider bottle were tossed upon the grass.

“Soul of my grandmother, bully Hopart, but it’s the captain!”

“Lording! lording!”

“Devil’s luck, and I’m no sinner!”

They made a rush across the grass, waving their caps and cutting grotesque capers.

“Hopart! Guicheaux!”

“The very dogs, messire.”

“God save me, but this is gallant!”

Bertrand’s face beamed like a great boy’s as he rolled out of the saddle almost into Guicheaux’s arms. Hopart and his brother bully sprang at him like a couple of barking and delirious dogs. So rough and strenuous were their methods of showing joy that a stranger might have taken them for a couple of footpads in the act of robbing a gentleman of his purse.

“Captain, captain, I could hug the heart out of you.”

“Goodman, Guicheaux. Give me a grip.”

“A crack of the knuckle-bones. Sir, but you are still strong in the fist.”

In the midst of all this loving turbulence the gyrfalcon on Bertrand’s wrist took to fluttering and screeching by way of protest, ruffled in feathers as well as temper. Bertrand disentangled himself, laughing and not a little out of breath.

“Captain, we have been beating all the country this side of Loudeac.”

“Good-fellows!”

“And, lord, we have had our hands busy cramming lies back down these squeakers’ throats. Faugh! how some of these fat folk stink of the pit!”

“So you have heard lies, eh?”

Hopart and Guicheaux exchanged glances.

“Well, captain, there’s never a wind in seed-time but thistle-down’s a blowing. Certain lewd rogues had been puffing a tale of the fight at Mivoie.”

“To be sure.”

“What is more, captain, a harping devil made so bold as to blab of it at Cancale.”

“To Sieur Robert, eh?”

“Yes, and to madame.”

“And it was believed?”

Guicheaux screwed his hatchet face into a kind of knot.

“Your pardon, captain, Madame Jeanne is a great lady.”

“And has some spite against me. Well?”

Guicheaux looked at Hopart; his comrade returned an eloquent grin.

“Well, captain, we two took that harping devil and half drowned him in the ditch.”

“You did?”

“But madame had her weapons ready. Brother Hopart, be so good as to scratch my back.”

The fat man pulled up the thin man’s shirt, and Guicheaux displayed a back still livid from the blows of a whip.

“Madame knows how to argue, captain,” and he chuckled.

“What, they whipped you?”

“By the lord, they did that!” and Guicheaux proceeded to display in turn his comrade’s honorable scars.

Bertrand looked at them, stubble-chinned rascals that they were, and felt a significant stiffening of the throat. It was no news to him that Dame Jeanne should have been ready to hear him slandered, but the loyalty of these rough dogs of war more than compensated for the smart.

“Hopart, Guicheaux, answer me. It was told then to madame my mother that Bertrand du Guesclin had played the traitor?”

They both stared at him and nodded.

“She believed it?”

Again the two heads bobbed acquiescence.

“And you?”

“We, captain?”

“Yes, you.”

“Well,” and Guicheaux looked embarrassed—“well, Brother Hopart, what did we do?”

“Kicked,” quoth the fat man, “and were royally toe-plugged for our pains.”

Bertrand slipped the jesses and shook the falcon from his wrist. He opened his arms to the two men, and Messire Bertrand du Guesclin might have been seen embracing the two vagabonds like brothers.

“Assuredly,” he said, “that harper friend of yours told lies.”

“Captain!”

“I fought at Mivoie, but not in my own arms.”

“Captain! captain!”

“All Brittany will soon know the truth.”

“St. Ives du Guesclin!” And Guicheaux threw his cap into the air, sprang at Hopart, and smote him an open-handed smack across the chest.

“Bully Hopart, bully Hopart, we must get drunk on this—or die!”

And they gripped hands and danced round Bertrand like a couple of clowns at a fair.