Tinteniac was still asleep upon his straw, nor did TiphaÏne wake him, but stood at the window and watched the drama that was taking shape under the apple boughs. The man in the black harness was leaning on his sword, waiting for Croquart, whose fingers fumbled at the laces of his bassinet. There was something familiar to TiphaÏne in this attitude of his, the attitude of a man whose heart beat steadily and whose eyes were quick and on the alert.

Croquart’s sword was out. He looked at the window where TiphaÏne stood, and guessed by her face that she did not wish him great success.

“Guard, Breton.”

They sprang to it with great good-will, Bertrand keeping careful guard, and never shifting his eyes from the Fleming’s face. He had learned his lesson off by heart, to let Croquart think that he had an easy bargain and that a few heavy blows would end the tussle. The butcher-boy of Flanders fell to the trick; he had met so few men who could match him in arms that he had grown rash in his methods, forgetting that guile is often more deadly than muscle and address. He had seen that Bertrand was a head shorter than himself; he soon suspected that he was clumsy, and not the master of his sword.

Bertrand gave ground, puffing and laboring like a man hard pressed. He let the Fleming’s blows rattle about his body harness, half parrying them with a concealed adroitness, continually retreating, or dodging to right and left. He was playing for an opening in Croquart’s attack, luring him into rashness, tempting him to hammer at him without thought of a dangerous counter in return. Croquart would soon stretch himself for the coup de grÂce, thinking his man tired, and that he had trifled with him over-long.

Still Bertrand bided his time. He faltered suddenly, made a pretended stumble, tempted Croquart with an unguarded flank. Down came the Fleming’s open blow, given with the rash vigor of a man imagining the victim at his mercy. Bertrand bent from it like a supple osier, rallied, and struck out with a swiftness that caught Messire Croquart off his balance and off his guard. Steel met steel on the vambrace of the Fleming’s sword-arm. TiphaÏne had a vision of a lopped limb swinging by its tendons, of a falling sword, of a second blow heaved home on the Fleming’s thigh.

The loss of his right hand sent Croquart mad. He picked up the fallen sword, and flew at Bertrand like any Baersark, the one lust left in him to wound, to mutilate, and to kill.

The din of their fighting had wakened Tinteniac, and he had dragged himself from the straw to join TiphaÏne at the window. They stood shoulder to shoulder, silent, and half awed by the fury of these two men, who neither desired nor craved for mercy. Tinteniac had seen such battles before, but to the woman there was something horrible and repulsive in its animal frenzy, a reversion to the brutal past, when the lusts of man made him an ape or a bull. She shuddered at Croquart’s dangling hand, and at the mad biting of his breath as he lashed at Bertrand with his sword. Shocked by the brute violence, the physical distortions of the scene, she turned back into the room, unwilling to watch the ordeal to the end.

Soon she heard a hoarse cry from Tinteniac. The men had closed and gone to earth, and were struggling together in the long grass. Croquart was losing blood and strength, and in such a death-grapple under the trees the cunning of the wrestler gave Bertrand the advantage. Though the lighter man, he was tougher and more sinewy than the Fleming, and fit in the matter of condition as a lean hound who has worked for his food.

“By God, he has the fellow down!”

Tinteniac was biting his lips in his excitement, and shivering like a dog on leash waiting to be let loose upon the quarry. Bertrand, with a twist of the leg and a hug of the Fleming’s body, had turned Croquart under him and won the upper hand. The Breton’s fist flew to his poniard. Croquart, who knew the meaning of the act, kicked like a mad horse, twisting and turning under Bertrand’s body. With a heave of the arm he rolled half over, and, lifting Bertrand, struggled to his knees. Before he could shake the Breton off the misericord was splitting the plates of his gorget. Croquart, with a great cry, fell forward upon his face, dragging Bertrand with him into the grass, as a sinking ship drags down the enemy it has grappled hulk to hulk. Slowly the black figure disentangled itself from the red, rose up, and leaned for a moment against the trunk of a tree.

“An end to Croquart!”

The words came from Tinteniac in a half whisper, but TiphaÏne heard them where she stood in the deep shadow against the wall.

Croquart dead! And she seemed to feel the great breath of gratitude the Breton folk would draw for such a death. Guymon, TÊte Bois, Harduin, and the Fleming, all had fallen to the sword of this one man who had dogged them through the woods past Loudeac. Tinteniac had taken his shield, and was holding it from the window so that the hero of the orchard should see the blazonings. TiphaÏne still leaned against the wall, watching Tinteniac and the blur of green woodland and blue sky above his head.

Bertrand was bending over Croquart and unlacing the bassinet that still bore the fox’s brush. He saw TiphaÏne’s face beside Tinteniac at the window. Her presence did not hinder him, but rather urged him to despatch the work in hand.

“Sieur de Tinteniac,” he shouted, “make me one promise and I give you back your liberty.”

The aristocrat made the man in the black harness a very flattering bow.

“The conqueror of Croquart can ask what he pleases.”

Bertrand, with TiphaÏne’s face looking down on him like lost love’s face out of heaven, broke the laces of Croquart’s bassinet.

“Sire”—and his voice needed no disguising—“I ask you and madame, your wife, not to leave that room till I have made an end.”

Tinteniac gave the promise, turning with a smile to TiphaÏne, who promised nothing.

“Granted, sir. And in return, will you trust us with your name?”

Bertrand had turned his back on them and was bending over the body.

“Sire, you ask me what I cannot answer.”

“We will hold it sacred.”

Bertrand shook his head.

Tinteniac pressed him no further, and Bertrand, forcing off Croquart’s bassinet, broke away the plates of the gorget from the bleeding throat. Picking up his poniard he slit the Fleming’s surcoat from breast to knee, dragged it from the body, and spread the stuff upon the grass. Two sharp sweeps of the sword served to sever the neck. The dead thing was wrapped up in the red surcoat, and the ends of the cloth knotted together.

Tinteniac watched all this from the window, mystified in measure as to what the man in the black harness purposed next. He had not noticed that TiphaÏne had left him, had lifted the bar from the staples, and was hurrying down the stone stairway into the hall.

Bertrand ran the blade of his sword under the knotted ends of the surcoat, slung it over his shoulder like a bundle, and picked up his shield. He gave a last look at the window, saluted Tinteniac, and marched off briskly into the orchard. His black harness had already disappeared beyond the apple-trees before TiphaÏne’s gray gown swept the grass.

She looked round her with a slight knitting of the brows, seeing only Tinteniac at the window, the white domes of the trees, and the headless body in its gaudy harness lying prone in the long grass.

“Where?” and her eyes questioned Tinteniac, who stroked his chin and appeared puzzled.

“Our Breton champion has left us with our liberty.”

“Gone?”

“Like a beggar with a bundle. Let the man alone. He has his reasons and the advantage of us.”

“And yet—”

Tinteniac laughed.

“The woman in you is inquisitive,” he said.

TiphaÏne went a few steps nearer to Croquart’s body. It seemed difficult to believe that this lifeless, weltering thing had raised in her but an hour ago all the passionate hatred that great love of her home land could inspire. Now that it was mere carrion she conceived a scornful pity for the thing as she recalled the man’s arrogance, his bombast, his supreme and coarse self-adoration. Truly this was the proper rounding of such a life, to be bred a butcher, fattened with the blood of a noble province, and left a mere carcass for the crows and wolves. She turned from Croquart’s body with a sigh half of pity, half of disgust.

Tinteniac watched her from the window, his mind moved by the same reflections, the religious instinct in him pointing a moral. In the distance he had seen a figure on a horse pass through the morning mists in the meadows and vanish into the sun-touched woods.

“Our Breton has gone,” and he lifted up his shield, “I would have given half that ransom to have had a glimpse of his face.”

TiphaÏne looked at him with eyes that mused.

“Why should he have deserted us?”

“I am no reader of riddles. And our plans? What are they to be?”

“I am thinking of your wounds,” she answered.

“They are nothing. This fellow has given me new strength. Shall we still say, ‘to Josselin’?”

“Thanks, sire. I remember that I have the truth to tell.”