s, white and lichened.

A cat call from the lane was the last shot of the battle. Eagle
valiantly sleeked her disarrayed hair, the breast under her bodice still
heaving and sobbing. The June sun illuminated a determined child of the
gray eyed type between white and brown, flushed with fullness of blood,
quivering with her intensity of feeling.

"Who would say this was Mademoiselle de Ferrier!" observed the younger
of the two men. Both were past middle age. The one whose queue showed
the most gray took Eagle reproachfully by her hands; but the other stood
laughing.

"My little daughter!"

"I did strike the English girl--and I would do it again, father!"

"She would do it again, monsieur the marquis," repeated the laugher.

"Were the children rude to you?"

"They mocked him, father." She pulled the boy from behind a grave-stone
where he crouched unmoving as a rabbit, and showed him to her guardians.
"See how weak he is! Regard him--how he walks in a dream! Look at his
swollen wrists--he cannot fight. And if you wish to make these English
respect you you have got to fight them!"

"Where is Ernestine? She should not have left you alone."

"Ernestine went to the shops to obey your orders, father."

The boy's dense inertia was undisturbed by what had so agonized the
girl. He stood in the English sunshine gazing stupidly at her guardians.

"Who is this boy, Eagle?" exclaimed the younger man.

"He does not talk. He does not tell his name."

The younger man seized the elder's arm and whispered to him.

"No, Philippe, no!" the elder man answered. But they both approached the
boy with a deference which surprised Eagle, and examined his scarred
eyebrow and his wrists. Suddenly the marquis dropped upon his knees and
stripped the stockings down those meager legs. He kissed them, and the
swollen ankles, sobbing like a woman. The boy seemed unconscious of this
homage. Such exaggeration of her own tenderness made her ask,

"What ails my father, Cousin Philippe?"

Her Cousin Philippe glanced around the high walls and spoke cautiously.

"Who was the English girl at the head of your mob, Eagle?"

"Sally Blake."

"What would Sally Blake do if she saw the little king of France and
Navarre ride into the church lane, filling it with his retinue, and
heard the royal salute of twenty-one guns fired for him?"

"She would be afraid of him."

"But when he comes afoot, with that idiotic face, giving her such a good
chance to