t glad eyes by the woman for whom you have done brave deeds is the joy
of life. Only to taste its flavour, she herself must tell you of it. And
John d'Albret was very far from the Mas of the Mountain of Barbentane.
He did not feel the dry even rush of the high mistral, steady and broad
as a great ocean current--yet how many times more swift. The wind that
fanned his heated temples was the warm day wind of Africa, coming in
stifling puffs as from an oven, causing the dust to whirl, and lifting
the frilled leaves of the palms like a woman's garments. At night, on
the contrary, the humid valley-winds stealing down from the Canigou made
him shiver, as he crouched in the ancient sheepfolds and rude cane-built
shelters where he had expected to find Jean-aux-Choux.

But these were deserted, the charge of his troop taken over by another.
The house of La Masane had been put to sack--partly by those who had
come to take away the more portable furniture for the _tartana_ bound
for Les Santes Maries, and also in part at a later date by the retainers
of the Lord of Collioure. Several times, from his hiding-place on the
mountain, John d'Albret had observed Raphael Llorient wandering idly
about the abandoned house of La Masane, revolving new plots or brooding
on the manner in which the old had been foiled.

As Jean-aux-Choux did not return, the Abbe John waxed quickly weary of
the bare hillside, where also he was in constant danger of discovery
from some of Jean-aux-Choux's late comrades. These, however, contented
themselves chiefly with surveying their flocks from convenient
hill-tops, or at most, in launching a couple of swift dogs in the tracks
of any wanderers. But John knew that these very dogs might easily at any
moment lead to his discovery, if they smelt out the reed-bed in which it
was his habit to lie hid during the day.

Meantime the Abbe, with needle and thread drawn from Jean-aux-Choux's
stores, had busied himself in repairing the ravages prison-life had made
in his apparel. And with his habitual handiness, begun in the Bedouin
tents of the Latin quarter, and continued in the camps of the Bearnais,
he achieved, if not complete success, at least something which suggested
rather a needy young soldier, a little battered by the wars, than a
runaway prisoner from the dungeons of the Holy Office.

His aspect was rendered still more martial by Jean-aux-Choux's long
Valaisian sword (with "Achille Serre, of Sion" engraved upon t