the young maids led captive, and the
babes flung like useless baggage through windows into the gutter, and
that is the last I have heard of Le Grand Sarrasin!" said Brother Hugo,
sadly enough.

I stood beside him silently, and the salt tears burst painfully under my
eyelids as I heard the fate of that poor town by the Breton coast.

"Ay, weep, lad, weep!" he said. "And God give strength to our arms to
show him better than tears, if he come our way, this fiend that fears
not God nor man."

"But the monks, brother, are they not safe? The worst pirates ofttimes
fear to touch holy men and holy places," I interposed.

"The monks of St Brieuc," he said solemnly and sadly, "holy men and
servants of the poor, lie cold and still in their dormitories, brother
by brother, saint by saint. And the sun looks in on them and sees their
faces agonized in death, and the blind eyes staring with horror at the
fate that woke them but for death. In such wise the Sarrasin's devils
fear holy men and holy places."

I saw Brother Hugo as he looked far out to sea in his turn dash the
drops of salt from his eyes, and strive to master his sorrow.

"Should they come our way?" I asked, in bitter questioning.

"Surely, ere long!" he answered, "and we shall be prepared. I pray to
God, and--smile not at it, lad--some sort of vision in a dream has come
to me that the downfall of 'the Grand Sarrasin' shall be through us,
brethren of the Vale, and perhaps through me."

A kind of holy look floated into his face as he said this and looked
seaward; an upward look as of seraphs close to God, not seraphs frail
and delicate, but full of lusty strength and goodly spirit of war, such
as went forth with Michael, when there was war in Heaven.

"Be strong, and of good courage!" he murmured to himself; and, pausing
awhile, strode with me across the fort, showing me this or that, that
was fresh provided for safety, and the goodly stores of food, and the
watchmen even now out on the towers, and the alarms all ready to call in
the defenceless. Indeed all was there that a great captain could devise
for safety in time of border warfare.

"Thou knowest," he said presently, pointing towards the chateau, "that
it is forbid to travel thither. Nigel, it is a very castle they are
building, and beside it this fortress of ours is weak and small."

"It will be then," I said, "maybe a strife of castle with castle," said
I.

"Ay, so it will," he said, "and that ere lon