gabble of the countryside I call it. Lord, if
they only knew what I know, then, indeed--but enough. Marshal Gilles
is a mighty scholar as well, and hath Henriet the clerk--a weak,
bleating ass that will some day blab if my master permit me not to
slice his gizzard in time--he hath him up to read aloud Latin by the
mile, all out of the books called Suetonius and Tacitus--such
high-flavoured tales and full of--well, of things such as my master
loves."

So ran Gilles de Sille on as the miles fled back behind their horses'
heels and the towers of Chartres rose grey and solemn through the
morning mists before the travellers.

CHAPTER XLVI

THE COUNTRY OF THE DREAD

The three remaining Scottish palmers were riding due west into a
sunset which hung like a broad red girdle over the Atlantic. All the
sky above their heads was blue grey and lucent. But along the horizon,
as it seemed for the space of two handbreadths, there was suspended
this bandolier of flaming scarlet.

The adventurers were not weary of their quest. They were only sick at
heart with the fruitlessness of it.

First upon leaving Paris they had gone on to the Castle of Champtoce,
and from beneath had surveyed the noble range of battlements crowning
the heights above the broad, poplar-guarded levels of the Loire. The
Chateau de Thouars also they had seen, a small white-gabled house,
most like a Scottish baron's tower, which the Marshal de Retz
possessed in virtue of his neglected wife Katherine. In it her sister
the Lady Sybilla had been born. Solitary and tenantless, save for a
couple of guards and their uncovenanted womenkind, it looked down on
its green island meadows, while on the horizon hung the smoke of the
wood fires lit at morn and eve by the good wives of Nantes.

To that place the three had next journeyed and had there beheld the
great Hotel de Suze, set like an enemy's fortress in the midst of the
turbulent city, over against the Castle of the King. But the Hotel,
though held like a place of arms, was untenanted by the marshal, his
retinue, or the lost Scottish maids.

Next they found the strong Castle of Tiffauges, above the green and
rippling waters of the Sevres, void also as the others. No light
gleamed out of that window of sinister repute, high up in the
cliff-like wall, from which strange shapes were reported to look forth
even at deep midnoon.

North, south, and east the three had ridden through the country of
Retz. There r