ence, and perchance that weighed with
Sir John and made him less willing to bestir himself in the matter. But
be that as it may, nothing had been done when Arnald de Brocas breathed
his last; and his wife, when she heard the tale, looked at you two young
children as you lay upon the grass at play, and she said with a sigh and
a smile, 'Father, I will wait till my boys be grown, for what can one
weak woman do alone? and then we will go together to the land that is
mine by birth, and my boys shall win back for me and for themselves the
lost inheritance of Basildene.'"

"And so we will!" cried Gaston, with flashing eyes; "and so we will!
Here as I stand I vow that we will win it back from the false and coward
kinsman who holds it now."

"Ay," answered Raymond, with equal ardour and enthusiasm, "that,
Brother, will we do; and we will win for ourselves the name that she
herself gave to us -- The Twin Brothers of Basildene."

CHAPTER III. THE UNKNOWN WORLD.

So that was the story of their past. That was why they two, with the
blood of the De Brocas running in their veins, had lived all their past
lives in the seclusion of a humble mill; why they had known nothing of
their kinsfolk, albeit they had always known that they must have kindred
of their own name and race; and why their mother upon her deathbed had
spoken to them not of any inheritance that they might look to claim from
descent through their father, but of Basildene, which was theirs in very
right, as it had been hers before, till her ambitious and unscrupulous
kinsman had driven her forth.

And now what should they do? Whither should they go; and what should be
the object of the lives -- the new lives of purpose and resolve which
had awakened within them?

Gaston had given voice to this feeling in vowing them to the attempt to
recover their lost heritage of Basildene, and Father Anselm did not
oppose either that desire or the ardent wish of the youths to fare forth
into the great world alone.

"My sons," he said a few days later, when he had come to see if the
twins held yet to their first resolve. "You are something young as yet
to sally forth into the unknown world and carve for yourselves your
fortunes there; but nevertheless I trow the day has come, for this place
is no longer a safe shelter for you. The Sieur de Navailles, as it is
told me, is already searching for you. It cannot be long before he finds
your hiding place, and then no man may c