es more, for one gust of the
mountain air of my own hills."

"Which way lies your home, Gaston?" asked Eustace. "Near the pass by
which we crossed?"

"No; more to the west. My home, call you it? You would marvel to see
what it is now. A shattered, fire-scathed keep; the wolf's den in
earnest, it may be. It is all that is left of the Castle d'Albricorte."

"How?" exclaimed Eustace. "What brought this desolation?"

"Heard you never my story?" said Gaston. "Mayhap not. You are fresh
in the camp, and it is no recent news, nor do men question much whence
their comrades come. Well, Albricorte was always a noted house for
courage, and my father, Baron Beranger, not a whit behind his
ancestors. He called himself a liegeman of England, because England
was farthest off, and least likely to give him any trouble, and made
war with all his neighbours in his own fashion. Rare was the prey that
the old Black Wolf of the Pyrenees was wont to bring up to his lair,
and right merry were the feastings there. Well I do remember how my
father and brothers used to sound their horns as a token that they did
not come empty-handed, and then, panting up the steep path, would come
a rich merchant, whose ransom filled our purses half a year after, or a
Knight, whose glittering armour made him a double prize, or--"

"What! you were actually--"

"Freebooters, after the fashion of our own Quatre fils Aymon," answered
Gaston, composedly. "Yes, Beranger d'Albricorte was the terror of all
around, and little was the chance that aught would pursue him to his
den. So there I grew up, as well beseemed the cub of such a wolf,
racing through the old halls at my will."

"Your mother?" asked Eustace.

"Ah! poor lady! I remember her not. She died when I was a babe, and
all I know of her was from an old hag, the only woman in the Castle, to
whom the charge of me was left. My mother was a noble Navarrese damsel
whom my father saw at a tourney, seized, and bore away as she was
returning from the festival. Poor lady! our grim Castle must have been
a sad exchange from her green valleys--and the more, that they say she
was soon to have wedded the Lord of Montagudo, the victor of that
tourney. The Montagudos had us in bitter feud ever after, and my
father always looked like a thunderstorm if their name was spoken.
They say she used to wander on the old battlements like a ghost, ever
growing thinner and whiter, and scarce seemed to joy even in h