do for one night. None would molest
him here.

"Can I have a room until daybreak to-morrow and a meal?" he asked of a
slatternly looking woman leaning against the doorpost; "I have ridden
some distance and am very fatigued."

"Without doubt," she answered. "'Tis for that we keep house. Come in."

"And my horse?"

"That also--hard by," she said. "I will call my good man," and
uttering a shriek, which was answered from the back by a gruff male
voice, she called out again: "Come and take the traveller's horse,
_scelerat_! _Mon Dieu_, have you nothing else to do but sit drinking
there all day?"

A heavy footfall sounded in the passage, and presently a large,
unkempt man came along it, and, seeing the traveller standing there,
put up a dirty hand to his tousled hair and said, "_Bon jour,
voyageur._" But the next moment he pushed that hair away from his eyes
and, staring at St. Georges, said: "I know your face, stranger. Where
have I seen it before?"

"How can I say?" St. Georges asked in reply. "I at least do not know
yours."

Yet he turned pale as he answered, and regarded the man fixedly, for
he had recognised the other at once. The fellow before him had been
one of the _comites_ of a galley in which St. Georges had rowed before
being transferred to L'Idole--had thrashed and belaboured him often.
Of all the brutal overseers this man had been, perhaps, the most
cruel! He was in a trap if he should recall where he had seen him
before, a trap from which escape would be difficult. For at a word
from him he would never be allowed to pass the gates of Bayeux, but
would be arrested at once, taken before the president of the city,
and--sent back to the galleys if not executed, as he would undoubtedly
be if it leaked out that he had fought against France!

"All the same, I know you," the man replied. "I must reflect. I must
think. In my time I have known----"

"_Dinde!_" shrieked the woman at him, "will you keep the traveller
standing all day in the passage while you indulge in your accursed
recollections? _Mon Dieu!_ are we so overrun with customers that you
have naught else to do but gape at them? _Sot!_ take his horse to the
forge outside."

The fellow--who seemed bemused by frequent drinkings in the back place
whence the termagant had called him forth--did as he was bid, and,
seizing the nag's head, led it down an alley running at a left angle
to the house, and so to a forge--in which, however, there was no sign