and the Swan, and Danae, and other heathen pliskies.  We were chaffering over the price, and getting near a bargain, when in comes Patrick Ogilvie with a tale of this second-sighted Maid, and how she had been called to see the King, and of what befell.  First, it seems, she boded the death of that luckless limb of a sentinel, and then you took it upon you to fulfil her saying, and so you and he were drowned, and I left prenticeless.  Little comfort to me it was to hear Kennedy and Ogilvie praise you for a good Scot and true, and say that it was great pity of your death.”

At this hearing my heart leaped for joy, first, at my own praise from such good knights, and next, because I saw a blink of hope, having friends at Court.  My master went on—­

“Next, Ogilvie told how he had been in hall, with the Dauphin, the Chancellor Tremouille, and some scores of knights and nobles, a great throng.  They were all waiting on this Lorrainer wench, for the Dauphin had been told, at last, that she brought a letter from Baudricourt, but before he would not see her.  This letter had been kept from him, I guess by whom, and there was other clash of marvels wrought by her, I know not what.  So their wisdom was set on putting her to a kind of trial, foolish enough!  A young knight was dressed in jewels and a coronet of the King’s, and the King was clad right soberly, and held himself far back in the throng, while the other stood in front, looking big.  So the wench comes in, and, walking straight through the press of knights, with her head high, kneels to the King, where he stood retired, and calls him ‘gentle Dauphin’!

“‘Nay, ma mie,’ says he, ’’tis not I who am the Dauphin, but his Highness yonder,’—­pointing to the young knight, who showed all his plumage like a muircock in spring.

“Nay, gentle Dauphin,” she answers, so Ogilvie said, “it is to thee that I am sent, and no other, and I am come to save the good town of Orleans, and to lead thee to thy sacring at Rheims.”

“Here they were all struck amazed, and the King not least, who then had some words apart with the girl.  And he has given her rooms in the Tour Coudraye within the castle; and the clergy and the doctors are to examine her straitly, whether she be from a good airt, {15} or an ill, and all because she knew the King, she who had never seen him before.  Why should she never have seen him—­who warrants me of it?—­she dwelling these last days nigh the castle!  Freits are folly, to my thinking, and fools they that follow them.  Lad, you gave me a gliff; pass me another stoup of wine!  Freits, forsooth!”

I served him, and he sat and chuckled in his chair, being pleasured by the thought of his own wisdom.  “Not a word of this to Elliot, though,” he said suddenly; “when there is a woman in a house—­blessings on her!—­it is anything for a quiet life!  But, ‘nom Dieu!’ what with the fright you gave me, sitting there, whereas I deemed you were meat for eels and carp, and what with thy tale—­ha, ha!—­and my tale, and the wine, maybe, I forgot your own peril, my lad.  Faith, your neck is like to be longer, if we be not better advised.”