Parisian. But, as I said last night, what you do in Amboise is between
you and the King, and you won't be the first man in the world who could
not see beyond a pair of grey eyes."

"Come, Villon, no Paris jests."

"This was pure nature and no jest. I stood near her there in the
shadow of the gate as Roland drew in to the bay on the edge of the
bank, and she forgot Francois Villon, the guard, and everybody, as a
woman does when her soul speaks to her heart. Not a word had she said
till then, not one, but stood breathing deep breaths; there were red
spots on the cheek-bones, with those little white teeth of hers hard on
her lip. But when you leant aside and gripped the boy she cried--but
what matters what she cried?"

"Is not friend more than family?" said La Mothe. "Tell me, my friend."

"So you would win old Villon as well as the girl? Well, here it is
then--'Thank God I was wrong, oh, thank God I was wrong: God be thanked
for a good man,' and the tears were tumbling down her cheeks. My
friend," and Villon's voice deepened soberly, "I who am old have been
young, and I tell you this, if a man has any true salt in him at all,
heaven may well open for him when a woman like Ursula de Vesc calls him
good with tears on her cheeks." And La Mothe had the wisdom and humble
grace to answer nothing at all. It was Villon himself who broke the
silence with a whistle.

"I am forgetting, fool that I am, though I think you too would have
forgotten with a pair of grey eyes weeping at your elbow. What do you
call this?"

From the cloth pouch which hung from his girdle he drew a small twig
and handed it to La Mothe. It was spray of wild sloe cut from a
thicket and trimmed to the shape of a cross, with one stiff thorn,
broad based and sharp at the point as a needle, projecting at right
angles from the intersection. The marks of the knife were still fresh
upon it, the bark so soft and sappy that it must have been cut from the
living plant within the hour. La Mothe shook his head as he turned it
over on his palm.

"This? What do you call it?"

"Many things; the shadow of death for one; revenge, I think, for
another; hate, and a warning certainly, unless I am a fool as well as
all the hard things Monsieur d'Argenton calls me. And perhaps I am a
fool, perhaps I had better have left that lying where I found it.
Almost death, that's just what it is."

"Villon, what do you mean?"

"I mean you would find just such anot