through the night of "mes Freres de Paradis," and of that golden "boyn"
faring in the dark, that I thought I saw, and of the words spoken by the
blind man and the soldier, concerning some vision which affrayed them, I
know not what.

At this tale the girl Elliot, crossing herself very devoutly, cried
aloud--

"O father, did I not tell you so? This holy thing can have been no other
but that blessed Maiden, guarded by the dear saints in form visible, whom
this gentleman, for the sin of keeping evil company, was not given the
grace to see. Oh, come, let us mount and ride to Chinon, for already she
is within the walls; had we not ridden forth so early, we must have heard
tell of it."

It seemed something hard to me that I was to have no grace to behold what
others, and they assuredly much more sinful men than myself, had been
permitted to look upon, if this damsel was right in that she said. And
how could any man, were he himself a saint, see what was passing by, when
his head was turned the other way? Howbeit, she called me a gentleman,
as indeed I had professed myself to be, and this I saw, that her passion
of anger against me was spent, as then, and gone by, like a shower of
April.

"Gentleman you call yourself, sir," said her father; "may I ask of what
house?"

"We are cadets of the house of Rothes," I answered. "My father, Leslie
of Pitcullo, is the fourth son of the third son of the last laird of
Rothes but one; and, for me, I was of late a clerk studying in St.
Andrews."

"I will not ask why you left your lore," he said; "I have been young
myself, and, faith, the story of one lad varies not much from the story
of another. If we have any spirit, it drives us out to fight the foreign
loons in their own country, if we have no feud at home. But you are a
clerk, I hear you say, and have skill enough to read and write?"

"Yea, and, if need were, can paint, in my degree, and do fair lettering
on holy books, for this art was my pleasure, and I learned it from a
worthy monk in the abbey."

"O day of miracles!" he cried. "Listen, Elliot, and mark how finely I
have fallen in luck's way! Lo you, sir, I also am a gentleman in my
degree, simple as you see me, being one of the Humes of Polwarth; but by
reason of my maimed leg, that came to me with scars many, from certain
shrewd blows got at Verneuil fight, I am disabled from war. A murrain on
the English bill that dealt the stroke! To make up my ransom (for I