ot
know what was going to happen, but not afterwards."

"But afterwards, in that awful moment when hope was gone and the world
slipped from you, when there was nothing real but God and your own
soul, what were your thoughts then?"

The boy made no reply, but shifted uneasily under the hand which still
rested upon him. The heavy eyes which had brightened while he spoke to
La Mothe grew dull and peevishly sullen again as, according to habit,
he glanced towards Ursula de Vesc. Following the glance La Mothe saw
the girl shake her head warningly, apprehensively even: but Charles had
not the obstinate Valois chin for nothing.

"Perhaps you have forgotten? At such times the mind is not very clear.
Or perhaps it was like a dream? Dreams, you know, are forgotten when
we wake."

"I remember very well. Yes, Ursula, I shall tell him since he asks. I
wondered whether a son who hated his father, or a father who hated his
son, would be most certainly damned."

"My son, my son," cried the priest, horrified. "How could you allow
such a terrible thought?"

"Oh!" And the boy shook off the restraining hand impatiently. "You
come from Valmy and are like all the rest of them. Monsieur La Mothe,
let us go and thank Grey Roland."

But as he followed the Dauphin out of the room La Mothe asked himself
whether, even with Ursula de Vesc's help, the end of the story could
possibly be Love, Peace, and Faith.

CHAPTER XVI

TOO SLOW AND TOO FAST

"I told you at the first you were not going the right way about it."

"And you were wrong," answered La Mothe. "I am only ten days in
Amboise, ten days which seem like so many hours, and already Charles
trusts me as he trusts Mademoiselle de Vesc."

Pushing out his loose-hung under lip Villon eyed his companion
quizzically, but with a little pity through the banter. They were
alone in the common room of the Chien Noir, and on the table by which
they sat were two bottles of the famous '63 wine, one empty, the other
with its tide at a low ebb, but La Mothe's horn mug was still unemptied
after its first filling. With some men this would have been an
offence, but not with Francois Villon. "Good-fellowship is not in wine
but in words, or surer still, in silence," he would say, "and another
man's drinking neither warms my heart nor cools my thirst. Besides,
there is the more left for the wiser man."

"Ten days of opportunity, and you are content that a boy trusts you!
Lovers w