honorable advancement.

The Red Ferret was one deed toward his vow. Surely a second, and perhaps
a better, was to be found somewhere upon this glorious countryside.
He had borne himself as the others had in the sea-fight, and could
not count it to his credit where he had done no more than mere duty.
Something beyond this was needed for such a deed as could be laid at the
feet of the Lady Mary. But surely it was to be found here in fermenting
war-distracted Brittany. Then with two done it would be strange if he
could not find occasion for that third one, which would complete his
service and set him free to look her in the face once more. With the
great yellow horse curveting beneath him, his Guildford armor gleaming
in the sun, his sword clanking against his stirrup-iron, and his
father's tough ash-spear in his hand, he rode with a light heart and a
smiling face, looking eagerly to right and to left for any chance which
his good Fate might send.

The road from Dinan to Caulnes, along which the small army was moving,
rose and dipped over undulating ground, with a bare marshy plain upon
the left where the river Rance ran down to the sea, while upon the right
lay a wooded country with a few wretched villages, so poor and sordid
that they had nothing with which to tempt the spoiler. The peasants had
left them at the first twinkle of a steel cap, and lurked at the edges
of the woods, ready in an instant to dive into those secret recesses
known only to themselves. These creatures suffered sorely at the hands
of both parties, but when the chance came they revenged their wrongs on
either in a savage way which brought fresh brutalities upon their heads.

The new-comers soon had a chance of seeing to what lengths they would
go, for in the roadway near to Caulnes they came upon an English
man-at-arms who had been waylaid and slain by them. How they had
overcome him could not be told, but how they had slain him within his
armor was horribly apparent, for they had carried such a rock as eight
men could lift, and had dropped it upon him as he lay, so that he was
spread out in his shattered case like a crab beneath a stone. Many a
fist was shaken at the distant woods and many a curse hurled at those
who haunted them, as the column of scowling soldiers passed the murdered
man, whose badge of the Molene cross showed him to have been a follower
of that House of Bentley, whose head, Sir Walter, was at that time
leader of the British for