will never take service again
with the Marshal de Retz."

"What know you of my master?" reiterated Gilles de Sille, glowering at
his mercurial jailer, without heeding his persiflage.

"Why, nothing at all," said Laurence, truthfully, "except that while
we stood listening to the singing of the choir within his hotel, a
poor woman came crying for her son, whom (so she declared) the marshal
had kidnapped. Whereat came forth the guard from within, and thrust
her away. Then arrived you and your varlets and got your heads broken
for your impudence. That is all I know or want to know of your
master."

Gilles de Sille lay back on his pallet with a sigh, still, however,
continuing to watch the lad's countenance.

"You should indeed take service with the marshal. He is the most
lavish and generous master alive. He thinks no more of giving a
handful of gold pieces to a youth with whom he is taken than of
throwing a crust to a beggar at his gate. He owns the finest province
in all the west from side to side. He has castles well nigh a dozen,
finer and stronger than any in France. He has a college of priests,
and the service at his oratory is more nobly intoned than that in the
private chapel of the Holy Father himself. When he goes in procession
he has a thurifer carried before him by the Pope's special permission.
And I tell you, you are just the lad to take his fancy. That I can
see at a glance. I warrant you, Master Laurence, if you will come with
me, the marshal will make your fortune."

"Did the other young fellow make his fortune?" said Laurence. Gilles
de Sille glared as if he could have slain him.

"What other?" he growled, truculently.

"Why, the son of the poor woman who cried beneath your kind master's
window the night before yestreen'."

The lank swarthy youth ground his teeth.

"'Tis ill speaking against dignities," he replied presently, with a
certain sullen pride. "I daresay the young fellow took service with
the marshal to escape from home, and is in hiding at Tiffauges, or
mayhap Machecoul itself. Or he may well have been listening at some
lattice of the Hotel de Pornic itself to the idiot clamour of his
mother and of the ignorant rabble of Paris!"

"Your master loves the society of the young?" queried Laurence,
mending carefully a string of his viol and keeping the end of the
catgut in his mouth as he spoke.

"He doats on all young people," answered Gilles de Sille, eagerly, the
flicker of a smile