ere days when his treasurer at Tours
(as I myself have heard him say) did not reckon three ducats in his
coffers, and the heir of France borrowed money from his very cook. So
the people told us, and I have often marvelled how, despite this poverty,
kings and nobles, when I have seen them, go always in cloth of gold, with
rich jewels. But, as you may guess, near the Court of a beggar Dauphin
the country-folk too were sour and beggarly.

We had to tighten our belts before we came to the wood wherein
cross-roads meet, from north, south, and east, within five miles of the
town of Chinon. There was not a white coin among us; night was falling,
and it seemed as if we must lie out under the stars, and be fed, like the
wolves we heard howling, on wind. By the roadside, at the crossways, but
not in view of the road, a council of our ragged regiment was held in a
deep ditch. It would be late ere we reached the town, gates would scarce
open for us, we could not fee the warders, houses would be shut and dark;
the King's archers were apt to bear them unfriendly to wandering men with
the devil dancing in their pouches. Resource we saw none; if there was a
cottage, dogs, like wolves for hunger and fierceness, were baying round
it. As for Brother Thomas, an evil bruit had gone before us concerning a
cordelier that the fowls and geese were fain to follow, as wilder things,
they say, follow the blessed St. Francis. So there sat Brother Thomas at
the cross-roads, footsore, hungry, and sullen, in the midst of us, who
dared not speak, he twanging at the string of his arbalest. He called
himself our Moses, in his blasphemous way, and the blind man having
girded at him for not leading us into the land of plenty, he had struck
the man till he bled, and now stood stanching his wound.

Suddenly Brother Thomas ceased from his twanging, and holding up his hand
for silence, leaned his ear to the ground. The night was still, though a
cold wind came very stealthily from the east.

"Horses!" he said.

"It is but the noise of the brook by the way," said the blind man,
sullenly.

Brother Thomas listened again.

"No, it is horses," he whispered. "My men, they that ride horses can
spare somewhat out of their abundance to feed the poor." And with that
he began winding up his arbalest hastily. "Aymeric," he said to one of
our afflicted company, "you draw a good bow for a blind man; hide
yourself in the opposite ditch, and be ready when I