“The craft is, then,” Father Urquhart went on, “that we shall destroy this English company with sword or arrow, but with no alarm of culverins or cannon.  Meanwhile, some five score of you will put on to-night the red cross of St. George, with plain armour, so that the English shall mistake you for their own men returning from the sally, and some few men in our own colours and coats you will hale with you as prisoners.  And, if one of you can but attire himself in some gear of the Maid’s, with a hucque of hers, scarlet, and dight with the Lilies of France, the English gate-wards will open to you all the more eagerly.”

“By the bones of St. Boswell!” cried Randal in his loud voice, but the good Father put a hand on his mouth.

“Quiet, man!” he said.

“By the blessed bones of St. Boswell,” Randal said again, as near a whisper as he could attain to, “the lady of the linen-basket shall come as the Maid.  We have no man so maidenly.”

They all shouted, laughing, and beating the tables with hands and tankards.

“Silence!” cried Robin Lindsay.

“Nay, the louder we laugh, the less will any suspect what is forward,” said Randal Rutherford.

“Norman, will you play this part in the mumming?”

I was ashamed to say no, though I liked it not over well, and I nodded with my head.

“How maidenly he blushes!” cried one, and there was another clamour, till the walls rang.

“So be it then,” says Father Urquhart, “and now you know all.  The honest Armagnacs will rise so soon as you are well within the gate.  They command both sides of the street that leads to the Port St. Denis, and faith, if the English want to take it, when a hundred Scots are within, they will have to sally forth by another gate, and come from the outside.  And you are to run up the banner of Scotland over the Port, when once you hold it, so the French attack will be thereby.”

“We played the same game before Verneuil fight, and won it,” said one; “will the English have forgotten the trick?”

“By St. Bride, when once they see us haling the Maid along, they will forget old stratagems of war.  This is a new device!  Oh to see their faces when we cry ‘St. Andrew,’ and set on!”

“I am not so old as you all in the wars,” I began.

“No, Mademoiselle la Lavandiere, but you are of the right spirit, with your wench’s face.”

“But,” I said, “how if the English that are to attack the windmill in the first grey of the morning come not to hand-strokes, or take to their heels when they find us awake, and win back to Paris before us?  Our craft, methinks, is to hold them in an ambush, but what if we catch them not?  Let but one runaway be swift of foot, and we are undone.”