successful as possible.

"You have already been studying the map, I hear, and know something
of the route. I have a good map myself, and we will follow the way
together upon it. It would be as well to see whether your rascal
knows anything of the country. In some of his wanderings, he may
have gone south."

"I will question him," Philip said and, reopening the door of the
room, he told Pierre, whom he had bidden follow him upstairs, to
enter.

"I am going down into Gascony, Pierre. It matters not, at present,
upon what venture. I am going to start tomorrow at daylight, in a
craft of Maitre Bertram's, which will land me ten miles this side
the mouth of the Gironde; by which, as you will see, I avoid having
to cross the Charente, where the bridges are all in the hands of
the Catholics. I am going in disguise, and I propose taking you
with me."

"It is all one to me, sir. Where you go, I am ready to follow you.
I have been at Bordeaux, but no farther south.

"I don't know whether you think that three would be too many. Your
men are all Gascons, and one or other of them might know the part
of the country you wish to travel."

"I had not thought of it," Philip said; "but the idea is a good
one. It would depend greatly upon our disguises."

"Do you travel as a man-at-arms, or as a countryman, or a pedlar,
or maybe as a priest, sir?"

"Not as a priest, assuredly," Philip laughed. "I am too young for
that."

"Too young to be in full orders, but not too young to be a
theological student: one going from a theological seminary, at
Bordeaux, to be initiated at Perigueux, or further south to Agen."

Philip shook his head.

"I should be found out by the first priest who questioned me."

"Then, sir, we might go with sacks of ware on our backs, as
travelling pedlars; or, on the other hand, we might be on our way
to take service under the Catholic leaders. If so, we might carry
steel caps and swords, which methinks would suit you better than
either a priest's cowl or a pedlar's pack.

"In that case there might well be three of us, or even four. Two of
your men-at-arms would go as old soldiers, and you and I as young
relations of theirs, anxious to turn our hands to soldiering. Once
in Gascony, their dialect would help us rarely, and our story
should pass without difficulty; and even on the way it would not be
without its use, for the story that they have been living near La
Rochelle but, owing to the concourse of Hugu