bles and sheep and cows, so
that the people of the castles might eat nice, white bread, and nut
cookies and roast meat; though the poor peasants themselves had to be
content, day after day, with little more than hard, black bread, and
perhaps a single bowl of cabbage or potato soup, from which the whole
family would dip with their wooden spoons.

Then, too, the peasants oftentimes had to pay taxes when their noble
lord wished to raise money, and even to follow him to war if he so
commanded, though this did not often happen.

And now we come to the reason for Gabriel's troubles. It seems that the
Count Pierre de Bouchage, to whose estate Gabriel's family belonged,
had got into a quarrel with a certain baron who lived near the town of
Evreux, and Count Pierre was determined to take his followers and attack
the baron's castle; for these private wars were very common in those
days.

But Count Pierre needed money to carry on his little war, and so had
laid a very heavy tax on the peasants of his estate; and Gabriel's
father had been unable to raise the sum of money demanded. For besides
Gabriel, there were several little brothers and sisters in the family,
Jean and Margot and little Guillaume, who must be clothed and fed; and
though the father was honest and hard-working, yet the land of their
little farm was poor, and it was all the family could do to find
themselves enough on which to live.

When peasant Viaud had begged Count Pierre to release him from the tax,
the count, who was hard and unsympathetic, had become angry, and given
orders that the greater part of their little farm should be taken from
them, and he had seized also their little flock of sheep. This was a
grievous loss, for out of the wool that grew on the sheeps' backs,
Gabriel's mother every winter made the warm, homespun clothes for all
the family.

Indeed, Count Pierre had no real right to do all this; but in those
times, when a noble lord chose to be cruel and unjust, the poor
peasants had no way to help matters.

And this was not all of Gabriel's woes; for only a few days after he had
told these things to Brother Stephen, when he went home at night, he
found his mother crying bitterly, and learned that Count Pierre, who was
having some trouble in raising his money, and so had become more
merciless than ever, had that day imprisoned his father at the castle,
and refused to release him unless some of the tax were paid.

This was the hardest blow