was another traveller down by the stream who
seemed more nearly concerned. When I came close to him, I found him
standing up to his waist in the water, taking soundings with a long and
heavy staff. His cordelier's frock was tucked up into his belt, his long
brown legs, with black hairs thick on them, were naked. He was a huge,
dark man, and when he turned and stared at me, I thought that, among all
men of the Church and in religion whom I had ever beheld, he was the
foulest and most fierce to look upon. He had an ugly, murderous visage,
fell eyes and keen, and a right long nose, hooked like a falcon's. The
eyes in his head shone like swords, and of all eyes of man I ever saw,
his were the most piercing and most terrible. On his back he carried, as
I noticed at the first, what I never saw on a cordelier's back before, or
on any but his since--an arbalest, and he had bolts enough in his bag,
the feathers showing above.

"Pax vobiscum," he cried, in a loud, grating voice, as he saw me, and
scrambled out to shore.

"Et cum anima tua," I answered.

"Nom de Dieu!" he said, "you have bottomed my Latin already, that is
scarce so deep as the river here. My malison on them that broke the
bridge!" Then he looked me over fiercely.

"Burgundy or Armagnac?" he asked.

I thought the question strange, as a traveller would scarce care to
pronounce for Burgundy in that country. But this was a man who would
dare anything, so I deemed it better to answer that I was a Scot, and, so
far, of neither party.

"Tug-mutton, wine-sack!" he said, these being two of many ill names which
the French gave our countrymen; for, of all men, the French are least
grateful to us, who, under Heaven and the Maid, have set their King on
his throne again.

The English knew this, if the French did not; and their great King, Harry
the Fifth, when he fell ill of St. Fiacre's sickness, after plundering
that Scots saint's shrine of certain horse-shoes, silver-gilt, said well
that, "go where he would, he was bearded by Scots, dead or alive." But
the French are not a thankful people.

I had no answer very ready to my tongue, so stepped down silent to the
water-edge, and was about taking off my doublet and hose, meaning to
carry them on my head and swim across. But he barred the way with his
staff, and, for me, I gripped to my whinger, and watched my chance to run
in under his guard. For this cordelier was not to be respected, I
deemed, like others