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She added, with a malevolent glance towards Avery, "I suppose you know that Mrs. Denys is under notice to leave at the end of her month?" Piers glanced at Avery too a glance of swift interrogation. She nodded very slightly in answer. He looked again at Olive with eyes that gleamed in a fashion that few could have met without quailing. "Is she indeed?" he said.
But at the very moment of saying it he missed his axe, and saw how Gerard was sitting upon it, with his own laid ready to his hand. He lost countenance again directly. Denys smiled grimly at this bit of byplay. "Good morrow!" said Gerard quietly, keeping his eye on him. The watcher was now too ill at ease to be silent.
On this Gerard opened his heart. "Denys, ere I fell in with thee, I used often to halt on the road, unable to go farther: my puny heart so pulled me back: and then, after a short prayer to the saints for aid, would I rise and drag my most unwilling body onward. But since I joined company with thee, great is my courage.
Could you have the heart to send her to the same death with them; could you have the heart to condemn us to look on and see her slaughtered, who, but that she risked her life for ours, had not now been in jeopardy? Alas, sir! show me and my comrade some pity, if you have none for her, poor soul. Denys and I be true men, and you will rend our hearts if you kill that poor simple girl.
No, it was no dream; he heard the actual cry of those who strove for mastery: the exulting yell: "Englishmen, on! down, ye French tyrants!" "Out! out! ye English thieves!" "Saint Denys! on, on! Saint Michael, shield us!" Then came the sound of fiercer strife, the cry of deadlier anguish. For there with arrow, spear, and knife, Men fought the desperate fight for life.
He took a long draught of the Rhenish wine: it ran glowing through his veins, and warmed and strengthened his heart, but could not check his tremors whenever a gust of wind came. As for Denys and the other, they feasted recklessly, and plied the bottle unceasingly, and drank healths and caroused beneath that creaking sepulchre and its ghastly tenants.
"Well, she is a witness, and may be a necessary one." "Why, Messire Bailiff," put in Denys, "you lay not all your witnesses by the heels I trow." The alderman, pleased at being called bailiff, became communicative. "In a case of blood we detain all testimony that is like to give us leg bail, and so defeat justice, and that is why we still keep the women folk.
It is not as though they were dishonest folk flying the country; they owe not a stiver in Sevenbergen; and dear heart, Denys, you can't hunt all Holland for her." "Can I not?" said Denys grimly. "That we shall see." He added, after some reflection, that they must divide their forces; she stay here with eyes and ears wide open, and he ransack every town in Holland for her, if need be.
"Cursed be the land I 'was born in! cursed be the race of man! and he that made them what they are!" screamed Denys. "Hush, Denys, hush! blaspheme not! Oh, God forgive him, he wots not what he says. Be patient, Denys, be patient: though we meet no more on earth, let us meet in a better world, where no blasphemer may enter. To my heart, lost friend; for what are words now?"
Then he was so good as to tell me, soldiers do commonly the crimes for which all other men are broke on the wheel; a savoir murder, rape, and pillage." "And is't not true?" "True or not, it was ill manners," replied Denys guardedly.
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