have made some feeble reply, but Pierre de l'Hopital
cut across the conversation with that stern irony which characterised
him.

"My lord," he said, "remember that before you were made Marshal of
France you were born a subject of the Duke of Brittany! And as such
you shall be judged."

"I decline to stand at your tribunal!" said the marshal, haughtily.

"_Soit!_" said the President, indifferently, "but all the same you
shall be tried!"

Duke John, knowing well that while his court was being held in the
capital city of his province, and especially during the trial of
Gilles de Retz, Nantes was no place for young maidens who had suffered
like Maud Lindesay and Margaret Douglas, sent them under escort to the
Castle of Angers.

Sholto MacKim and his father were allowed to accompany them, that they
might not be without some of their own country to speak with during
their sojourn in France. The Lord James, however, elected to abide
with the court. For there were many ladies there, and, having nobility
of address and desiring to perfect himself in the niceties of
fashionable speech (which changed daily), he had great pleasure in
their society, and rode in the lists by the side of the Loire with
even more than his former gallantry and success.

For, as he said, he needed some compensation for the long abstinence
enforced upon him by his habit of holy palmer. And right amply did he
make himself amends, and was accounted by dames fair and free the
lightsomest and properest Scot who had ever come into the land of
France.

With him Laurence remained, both because his father was still angry
with him on account of his desertion of them in Paris, and also
because having been so long in the Castle of Machecoul, there were
important matters concerning which in the forthcoming trial he alone
could give evidence.

Pierre de l'Hopital would have detained the Lady Sybilla as a possible
accomplice of the Sieur de Retz, but by the intercession of the
Scottish maidens, as well as by the sworn evidence of Sholto and the
Lord James, testifying that wholly by her means Gilles de Retz had
finally been caught red-handed, she was permitted to depart whither
she would.

"I will go to my sister," she said to Sholto, who came to know how he
could serve her. "It matters little. My work is nearly done!"

So, riding as was her custom all alone upon a white palfrey, she
passed out of their sight towards the south.

* * *