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 was taken prisoner there, where so few got quarter) cost me every crown I could gather, so I even fell back on the skill I learned, like you, when I was a lad, from a priest in the Abbey of Melrose.  Ashamed of my craft I am none, for it is better to paint banners and missals than to beg; and now, for these five years, I am advanced to be Court painter to the King himself, thanks to John Kirkmichael, Bishop of Orleans, who is of my far-away kin.  A sore fall it is, for a Hume of Polwarth; and strangely enough do the French scribes write my name—­’Hauves Poulvoir,’ and otherwise, so please you; but that is ever their wont with the best names in all broad Scotland.  Lo you, even now there is much ado with banner-painting for the companies that march to help Orleans, ever and again.”