Croquart the Fleming had marched from Pontivy to take Josselin by surprise at the breaking of a summer dawn. The little town, with its gate-houses and spires, its high roofs and timber-capped turrets, had stood black and silent against the gold of the east when Croquart’s stormers crept up to set their ladders against the walls. Unluckily for the Fleming and his men, the Sieur de Beaumanoir had been forewarned as to their coming, and their welcome that May morning came in the shape of stones, molten lead, pitch, and a rain of quarrels from the walls. They had been beaten back, to flounder, many of them, like great black cockroaches in the mud of the town ditch. And, to complete the thoroughness of the repulse, the gates of Josselin had opened wide to pour columns of armed men into the town meadows.

The cocks of Josselin were still crowing when Geoffroi Dubois and his Breton gentlemen and men-at-arms rode through and through the disordered companies of the Fleming’s “horse.” Many debts were waiting for dismissal on the green slopes under the walls of Josselin town. Every man who could carry a sword or bill swarmed out by the gates to strike a blow against these plunderers of Breton towns. Butchers with their cleavers, smiths with their hammers, armorers’ apprentices with arms fresh from the forge followed in the track of the Sieur de Beaumanoir’s columns of steel. There was no taking of prisoners that morning in the Josselin meadows. The townsmen rushed in among the disordered free-lances, stabbing the horses and bringing the men-at-arms to earth. John Hamlin, an Englishman, and the Fleming’s brother in arms, was battered to death by the hammers of two smiths as he lay helpless in his heavy harness. Before the sun had topped the steeples the broken companies were streaming for the open moors, with Geoffroi Dubois and his Bretons in pursuit.

It was past noon that same day when Croquart reined in his black horse on the last sweep of moorland beneath the crests of the Loudeac woods. The Fleming wore a red surcoat covered with gold diapering, carried a fox’s brush in his gilded bassinet, and was armed in harness that any great lord might have coveted. The coxcombry of the adventurer showed itself even in the trappings of his horse, for the butcher-boy of Flanders, gay as any popinjay, had the love of a risen man for jewels, color, and the pomp of life.

Croquart stood in the stirrups and scanned the moorland under his hand. Hard galloping alone had saved him from the glitter of Dubois’s spears, and, as for his own mercenaries, he had left the fellows to look after their own souls. Three solitary riders were forcing their jaded horses up the slope towards him, the last and best mounted of his free lances, who had been able to keep sight of the black stern of Croquart’s horse.

Though still young, the Fleming had the coarse and florid features of a man whose appetites had been pampered by success. Vulgar, vain, supremely cunning, with a chest like a barrel, hands and throat like an Esau’s, he looked a heavy man, even on the big horse he rode. His broad, flat face mingled a snub-nosed audacity with the cheerful arrogance of sensual strength. The cheek-bones were high, the eyes small, deep set, and quick with the glint of a bird of prey. Even in defeat the man’s unbounded impudence had not deserted him, and his eyes twinkled as he watched the laboring approach of the survivors of his “free company,” a company that had dwindled to the ludicrous muster-roll of three.

“Hallo, sirs!” and he laughed in their faces; “Beaumanoir has made us hurry a little. Why, TÊte Bois, you have the lives of a cat. Pluck up heart, man; why so white about the mouth?”

He raised himself again in the stirrups and scanned the moors for any showing of pursuit. Save for a solitary figure on horseback that had appeared like a black speck on the brow of a low hill, the moorland appeared innocent of Dubois’s pursuing spears.

Croquart sat back in the saddle with a grunt of relief, and turned his eyes to the faces of his men. He had had sufficient experience of such gentry to know that he could trust their loyalty just as long as he could rely upon his purse.

“TÊte Bois, my sweet scoundrel, tell me how much Beaumanoir has promised to any man who shall bring him my head. You heard of it at Pontivy, eh?”

The man looked uneasily at the Fleming. There was an ironical glint in Croquart’s eyes that was disconcerting to a fellow with so sensitive a conscience.

“I never heard of the money, captain.”

Croquart’s lids contracted a little.

“Well, how much was it?”

“Sang de Dieu, captain—”

The Fleming laughed.

“Speak up, dear comrade. I see by your snout that you know as much as I do. Was it not five thousand crowns?”

He watched the men narrowly, yet with the cool confidence of one sure of his own strength.

“Five thousand crowns, sirs, for the head of Croquart the Fleming! Come, friend TÊte Bois, five thousand crown-pieces would give you many merry months in the taverns, eh?”

The tanned war-dog looked restless, as though Croquart’s raillery was too cunning to be pleasant.

“We are your men, captain.”

“Good fellows! good fellows! You love me about as well as a whore loves a gentleman with a pocketful of gold. I shall take care, sirs, not to sleep till we unsaddle in the west. Five hundred gold pieces are easily earned by a stab in the dark, TÊte Bois, eh? And, then, I am such a gay devil—my rings are worth a duke’s ransom,” and he glanced at his huge hands and then at the faces of his men.

“By St. George, captain—”

“Hallo, you are wondering how much money I have in my coffers at Morlaix. Good lads! I will remember to be generous.”

He understood the men and they him. It was a matter of money between them, a bribe that should out-bribe Beaumanoir’s bounty. Given fair play, the Fleming was more than a match for the three of them, and they knew it.

“No rat’s tricks, captain; we’ll take our oath on it.”

Croquart laid a hand significantly on his sword.

“The woods will serve us best,” he said. “We will take the forest way towards Loudeac. Dubois will not press too far into the west. After Loudeac we can take our time, for young Bamborough is at Guingamp.”

Croquart turned his head with a last backward look over the moors. The solitary rider who had topped the hill had dropped again from sight. Probably, so thought the Fleming, it was only another of his men who had escaped from the bloody Josselin meadows.

“Forward!” and he gave the word with gusto, as though he still commanded five hundred spears.

His men waited for him to lead the way.

“No, by my blood, gentlemen!” and he laughed. “Go forward. I prefer to take care of my own back.”

The popinjay is known by his gay colors, and it was Croquart’s love of gaudy trappings that betrayed him to the Breton rider whom he had seen poised for a moment on the brow of the next hill. The man had reined in his horse, craned forward in the saddle, and scanned with the keenness of a hawk the four steel-clad figures covered by the shadows of the Loudeac woods. Messire Croquart’s red surcoat, with its gold diaperings, and his gilded bassinet showed clearly against the green. It was for such a chance as this that Bertrand had played the spy at Pontivy. And for such a boon he had loitered on the moors near Josselin, coveting Dubois his battle-cry, and yet believing in his heart that Croquart would break free. The thing had happened even as Bertrand had desired it should. He was on the track of the Fleming, the taking of whose head would bless Brittany more than the fight at Mivoie had ever done.

“Brother Croquart, Brother Croquart, you think too much of the women, my friend!” and yet Bertrand forgot the fact that he himself thought each hour of the day of a pair of brown eyes and hair that changed in the sunlight from bronze to ruddy gold.

The champion of the fox’s brush rode towards Loudeac, with Bertrand on his heels, and at Loudeac the Sieur de Tinteniac’s shield hung in the guest-hall of the little abbey of St. Paul. Tinteniac and TiphaÏne had ridden by Montcontour, following the same road that Bertrand and her brother had taken not a month before. They had passed the first night at Montcontour, the second at Loudeac, and at Loudeac they had heard that Croquart had escaped from Josselin and was enlisting men on the banks of the Blavet. Refugees had fled to Loudeac from Pontivy, and the little town already trembled amid its woods, dreading to hear the Fleming’s trumpets sounding a challenge at the gates.

Tinteniac’s two esquires were making the final moves in a game of chess in the guest-hall oriel, while TiphaÏne and her serving-woman were dressing in their bedchamber for the day’s journey. Horses and palfreys stood saddled in the court, Tinteniac’s men and the two La BelliÈre servants strapping such baggage as they had on the backs of a couple of bony and ill-tempered mules. It was not known at Loudeac that Croquart had made his dash on Josselin from Pontivy, and that he and his men were scattered in flight over the Breton moors.

In the abbey garden the Sieur de Tinteniac leaned over the rail of the abbot’s fish-pond and threw pieces of bread to the fat carp that teemed in the waters of the “stew.” His pose was one of reflection, of dignity upon the pedestal of thought, as he watched a dozen silvery snouts clash together for each white morsel of bread. The high forehead and the meditative eyes, the stateliness of many stately generations, made of Tinteniac a figure of mark among the Breton nobles who followed the banner of Charles of Blois. The very hands that fed the fish were typical of the seigneur’s nature, clean, refined, sinewy, virile. His manner had that simple graciousness that makes beauty in man admirable even to his uglier fellows.

The ladies of Jean de PenthiÈvre’s household had long despaired of making the Sieur de Tinteniac blush for them, yet a most palpable deepening of color overspread his face that morning as the mistress of La BelliÈre came towards him between the herb-beds of the abbot’s garden. Thyme, marjoram, lavender, basil, rosemary, and balm crowded about the lithe lightness of her figure. As she stood before Tinteniac in her gray riding-cloak, lined with crimson silk, her hair burning in the sunlight about her face, she seemed to recall to him the troubled tenderness of a green yet stormy June, long grass weary with the rain, pools brimming with the sunset, silent trees wrapped in a mysterious glory of gold. Beauty in woman should fire all the best beauty in the soul of man. And to such as Tinteniac, whose natural impulses towards nobleness were above mere religious and chivalric ordinances, the girl’s brave charm was a mystery and a romance.

“Are the horses ready?”

“Ready, if you are not afraid of being snapped up by some of Croquart’s plunderers.”

“No, I am not afraid,” and her eyes showed Tinteniac that she spoke the truth; “but your wounds, sire? How one’s own trouble makes one selfish towards others!”

Tinteniac looked at her as though he might imagine other woundings than those he had earned at the Oak of Mivoie.

“I am myself again, though I wear half-armor. We had better take the forest road.”

“As you will; I trust to you.”

She began to fasten her cloak with its loops of crimson cord, her hands moving slowly, her eyes looking past Tinteniac as though he were mere mist to her for the moment. She was thinking of Robin, her brother, buried in the abbey of Lehon, and of the old man, her father, sitting alone before the fire. From La BelliÈre her thoughts swept over Brittany with an impatient pity for the land that suffered.

“I had hoped that Mivoie would have ended all this misery,” she said.

Tinteniac was watching her as though her beauty had more meaning for him than her words.

“Montfort and Blois have the poor duchy by the horns and tail, while such a fellow as Croquart steals the milk.”

She looked at him with a slight frown and an impatient lifting of the head.

“Croquart, the butcher-boy from Flanders! And you nobles of Brittany, with all your chivalry, cannot match this fellow in the field.”

Tinteniac shrugged and smiled at her.

“What would you?”

“Why, were I a man—”

“Well—”

“And a Breton man—”

“Yes.”

“I should not rest till I had freed Brittany from such a brute.”

The seigneur spread his hands.

“But when the brute has a few hundred men behind him!—”

“Well, and no matter; Croquart is vain enough to take a challenge from a Breton noble.”

Tinteniac smiled, as though any mood of hers had magic for him.

“You trouble too much about this butcher-boy,” he said; “he will feel the rope like most of his brother thieves.”

“Ah, sire, I see, your hands are too white—”

“Too white?”

“To soil themselves with such as Croquart.”

Tinteniac’s stateliness appeared unruffled by the impatience in her voice. An aristocrat, he saw no great glory in hunting down this Flemish butcher-boy, who robbed towns and fed his men on the peasants’ corn, a fellow whose head was rancid with grease and whose breath stank of the nearest tavern. He would be taken and hanged in due season by the providence of God; but as for making an adventurous romance out of Croquart’s capture, Tinteniac, with his refined breeding, was not inspired to such a quest.

“The true chivalry”—and he spoke without haughtiness—“is of the heart, not of the arm.”

“They tell me Croquart has a giant’s arm.”

“Yes, from handling the butcher’s cleaver.”

“Then, sire, a gentleman would shame himself by taking blows from Croquart’s arm?”

Tinteniac’s eyes expressed amusement at the vehemence with which she spoke. It was good to see the child, so ran his stately reflection, flame up over the wrongs of the Breton poor.

“Madame, would you have me search from Dol to Nantes in order to break a butcher-boy’s skull?”

“Are you sure you would break it, sire?”

“No”—and he laughed with a generous frankness that could not be quarrelled with—“the butcher-boy might prove himself the better man. At Mivoie he was the best champion the English had.”

TiphaÏne flashed a look straight into Tinteniac’s eyes.

“Well, sire, I should honor the man who put an end to Croquart’s savagery.”

Tinteniac colored and gave her one of his most stately bows.

“Your words set a new price upon the fellow’s head.”