own much both in body
and mind, the boys would have thought it had been months, not years,
they had spent in that peaceful retreat.

The break to that quiet life came with a mission which was entrusted by
His Holiness himself to Father Paul, and which involved a journey to
Rome. With the thought of travel there came to Raymond's mind a longing
after his own home and the familiar faces of his childhood. The Father
was going to take the route across the sea to Bordeaux, for he had a
mission to fulfil there first. Why might not he go with him and see his
foster-mother and Father Anselm again? He spoke his wish timidly, but it
was kindly and favourably heard; and before the spring green had begun
to clothe the trees, Father Paul, together with Raymond and his shadow
Roger, had set foot once more upon the soil of France.

CHAPTER XII. ON THE WAR PATH

"Raymond! Is it -- can it be thou?"

"Gaston! I should scarce have known thee!"

The twin brothers stood facing one another within the walls of Caen,
grasping each other warmly by the hand, their eyes shining with delight
as they looked each other well over from head to foot, a vivid happiness
beaming over each handsome face. It was more than two years since they
had parted -- parted in the quiet cloister of the Cistercian
Brotherhood; now they met again amid scenes of plunder and rapine: for
the English King had just discovered, within the archives of the city
his sword had taken, a treaty drawn up many years before, agreeing that
its inhabitants should join with the King of France for the invasion of
England; and in his rage at the discovery, he had given over the town to
plunder, and would even have had the inhabitants massacred in cold
blood, had not Geoffrey of Harcourt restrained his fury by wise and
merciful counsel. But the order for universal pillage was not recalled,
and the soldiers were freebooting to their hearts' content all over the
ill-fated city.

Raymond had seen sights and had heard sounds as he had pressed through
those streets that day in search of his brother that had wrung his soul
with indignation and wonder. Where was the vaunted chivalry of its
greatest champion, if such scenes could be enacted almost under his very
eyes? Were they not true, those lessons Father Paul had slowly and
quietly instilled into his mind, that not chivalry, but a true and
living Christianity, could alone withhold the natural man from deeds of
cruelty and rapac