ant called the Fig of the Moors. But Jean-aux-Choux had no fear of
anything that walked upon four feet. He carried his long shepherd's
staff with the steel point to it, trailing behind him like a pike. And
though, rounding the salt marshes and _etangs_ or "stanks," there came
to his ears the crooning of the herds, muttering discontentedly in their
sleep with bovine noises, the sharp click of horns that tossed and
interlocked in their effort to dislodge the mosquitoes, the sludgy
splash of broad hooves in the wallows, the crisp snap of the salt crust,
like thin ice breaking--for all which things Jean-aux-Choux cared
nothing. Of course, his trained ear took in all these noises,
registering, classifying, and drawing deductions from them. But he never
once even raised his pointed staff, nor changed his direction. Perhaps
the shepherd's cloak deceived the animals, or more likely the darkness
of the night. For ordinarily it is death to venture there, save on
horseback, and armed with the trident of Camargue. Once or twice he
shouldered two or three bulls this way and that, pushing them over as
one who grooms horses in their stalls after the labours of the day.

But all the time his thoughts were on the paths by which he would carry
off his master's daughter, Claire Agnew, and set her in safety on the
soil of free, if stormy, France, where the Inquisition had no power--nor
was likely to have so long as the Bearnais lived, and the old-time
phalanx of the Calvinists, D'Aubigne, Rosny, Turenne, and the rest stood
about him.

Once or twice he thought, with some exultation, of the dead Valois. For,
if Guise had been the moving spirit and bloody executioner of Saint
Bartholomew, this same Henry of Valois, who had died at St. Cloud, had
been the chief plotter--rather, say, the second--for Catherine, his
mother, the Medicean woman, had assuredly been the first. For all he
had done personally, Jean had no care, no remorse. As to the deed of
Jacques Clement, he himself would not have slain an ally of the
Bearnais. But, after all, it was justice, that the priest should slay
the priest-ridden, and that the fanatic monk should slay the founder of
the Order of the Penitents.

Altogether, Jean-aux-Choux had a quiet mind as he went. Above him, and
somewhat to his left hand, hung a black mass, which was the rock-set
town of Elne on its look-out hill. Highest of all loomed the black,
shadowy mass of its cathedral, with the towers cutting a fa