ered as the gates closed behind her.

She was a good girl, as the times went, and she knew well that she had
been brought up the hill as the stallion that morning had been driven
down. She remembered the cut of the whip, and in the twilight of the
courtyard she stretched out her arms toward the little town below, where
the old man, her father, lived in semi-darkness, and where on that
Christmas evening the women were gathered in the churches to pray.

* * * * *

Having no seasonable merriment in himself, Charles surrounded himself
that night with cheer. A band of wandering minstrels had arrived to
sing, the great fire blazed, the dogs around it gnawed the bones of the
Christmas feast. But when the troubadours would have sung of the
Nativity, he bade them in a great voice to have done. So they sang of
war, and, remembering his cousin Philip, his eyes blazed.

When Joan came he motioned her to a seat beside him, not on his right,
but on his left, and there he let her sit without speech. But his mind
was working busily. He would have a son and the King would legitimise
him. Then let Philip go hang. These lands of his as far as the eye could
reach and as far again would never go to him.

The minstrels sang of war, and of his own great deeds, but there was no
one of them with so beautiful a voice as that of the Fool, who could
sing only of peace. And the Fool was missing.

However, their songs soothed his hurt pride. This was he; these things
he had done. If the Bishop had not turned sour and gone, he would have
heard what they sang. He might have understood, too, the craving of a
man's warrior soul for a warrior son, for one to hold what he had
gathered at such cost. Back always to this burning hope of his!

Joan sat on his left hand, and went hot and cold, hot with shame and
cold with fear.

So now, his own glory as a warrior commencing to pall on him, Charles
would have more tribute, this time as lord of peace. He would celebrate
this day of days, and at the same time throw a sop to Providence.

He would release the Jew.

The troubadours sang louder; fresh liquor was passed about. Charles
waited for the Jew to be brought.

He remembered Clotilde then. She should see him do this noble thing.
Since her mother had gone she had shrunk from him. Now let her see how
magnanimous he could be. He, the _seigneur_, who held life and death in
his hands, would this day give, not death, but li