“Did the other young fellow make his fortune?” said Laurence.  Gilles de Sille glared as if he could have slain him.

“What other?” he growled, truculently.

“Why, the son of the poor woman who cried beneath your kind master’s window the night before yestreen’.”

The lank swarthy youth ground his teeth.

“’Tis ill speaking against dignities,” he replied presently, with a certain sullen pride.  “I daresay the young fellow took service with the marshal to escape from home, and is in hiding at Tiffauges, or mayhap Machecoul itself.  Or he may well have been listening at some lattice of the Hotel de Pornic itself to the idiot clamour of his mother and of the ignorant rabble of Paris!”

“Your master loves the society of the young?” queried Laurence, mending carefully a string of his viol and keeping the end of the catgut in his mouth as he spoke.

“He doats on all young people,” answered Gilles de Sille, eagerly, the flicker of a smile running about his mouth like wild-fire over a swamp.  “Why, when a youth of parts once takes service with my master, he never leaves it for any other, not even the King’s!”

Which in its way was a true enough statement.

“Well,” quoth Master Laurence, when he had tied his string and finished cocking his viol and twingle-twangling it to his satisfaction, “you speak well.  And I am not sure but what I may think of it.  I am tired both of working for my father without pay, and of singing psalms in a monastery to please my lord Abbot.  Moreover, in this city of Paris I have to tell every jack with a halbert that I am not the son of the King of England, and then after all as like as not he marches me to the bilboes!”

“Of what nativity are you?” asked de Sille.

“Och, I’m all of a rank Irelander, and my name is Laurence O’Halloran, at your service,” quoth the rogue, without a blush.  For among other accomplishments which he had learned at the Abbey of Dulce Cor, was that of lying with the serene countenance of an angel.  Indeed, as we have seen, he had the rudiments of the art in him before setting out from the tourneying field at Glenlochar on his way to holy orders.

“Then you will come with me to-morrow?” said Gilles, smiling.

Laurence listened to make sure that neither his father nor Sholto was approaching the garret.

“I will go with you on two conditions,” he said:  “you shall not mention my purpose to the others, and when we escape, I must put a bandage over your eyes till we are half a dozen streets away.”

“Why, done with you—­after all you are a right gamesome cock, my Irelander,” cried Gilles, whom the conditions pleased even better than Laurence’s promise to accompany him.

Then, lending the prisoner his viol wherewith to amuse himself and locking the door, Laurence made an excuse to go to the kitchen, where he laughed low to himself, chuckling in his joy as he deftly handled the saucepans.