rown him.

But, for my part, I lay long in another bout of sore fever, sick here at
Orleans, where I was very kindly entreated by the people of the house,
and notably by the daughter thereof, a fair maid and gentle. To her care
the Maid had commanded me when she left Orleans, the English refusing
battle, as later I heard, and withdrawing to Jargeau and Paris. But of
the rejoicings in Orleans I knew little or nothing, and had no great
desire for news, or meat, or drink, but only for sleep and peace, as is
the wont of sick men. Now as touches sickness and fever, I have written
more than sufficient, as Heaven knows I have had cause enow. A luckless
life was mine, save for the love of Elliot; danger and wounds, and malady
and escape, where hope seemed lost, were and were yet to be my portion,
since I sailed forth out of Eden-mouth. And so hard pressed of sickness
was I, that not even my outwitting of Brother Thomas was a cause of
comfort to me, though to this day I cannot think of it without some
mirthful triumph.

CHAPTER XVI--HOW SORROW CAME ON NORMAN LESLIE, AND JOY THEREAFTER

It little concerns any man to know how I slowly recovered my health after
certain failings back into the shadow of death. Therefore I need not
tell how I was physicked, and bled, and how I drew on from a diet of milk
to one of fish, and so to a meal of chicken's flesh, till at last I could
sit, wrapped up in many cloaks, on a seat in the garden, below a great
mulberry tree. In all this weary time I knew little, and for long cared
less, as to what went on in the world and the wars. But so soon as I
could speak it was of Elliot that I devised, with my kind nurse,
Charlotte Boucher, the young daughter of Jacques Boucher, the Duke's
treasurer, in whose house I lay. She was a fair lass, and merry of mood,
and greatly hove up my heart to fight with my disease. It chanced that,
as she tended me, when I was at my worst, she marked, hanging on a silken
string about my neck, a little case of silver artfully wrought, wherein
was that portrait of my mistress, painted by me before I left Chinon.
Being curious, like all girls, and deeming that the case held some relic,
she opened it, I knowing nothing then of what she did. But when I was
well enough to lie abed and devise with her, it chanced that I was
playing idly with my fingers about the silver case.

"Belike," said Charlotte, "that is some holy relic, to which, maybe, you
owe your pre