is more than one way to Rome!' I answered oracularly,
though I was far from feeling as confident as I seemed. 'Come, let us
descend and view this nut a little nearer.'

We began to trail downwards in silence, and as the path let us for a
while, out of sight of the castle, we were able to proceed with less
caution. We had nearly reached without adventure the father skirts of
the wood, between which and the ruin lay an interval of open ground,
when we came suddenly, at the edge of a little clearing, on an old hag;
who was so intent; upon tying up faggots that she did not see us until
Maignan's hand was on her shoulder. When she did, she screamed out, and
escaping from him with an activity wonderful in a woman of her age, ran
with great swiftness to the side of an old man who lay at the foot of a
tree half a bowshot off; and whom we had not before seen. Snatching up
an axe, she put herself in a posture of defence before him with gestures
and in a manner as touching in the eyes of some among us as they were
ludicrous in those of others; who cried to Maignan that he had met his
match at last, with other gibes of the kind that pass current in camps.

I called to him to let her be, and went forward myself to the old man,
who lay on a rude bed of leaves, and seemed unable to rise. Appealing
to me with a face of agony not to hurt his wife, he bade her again and
again lay down her axe; but she would not do this until I had assured
her that we meant him no harm, and that my men should molest neither the
one nor the other.

'We only want to know this,' I said, speaking slowly, in fear lest my
language should be little more intelligible to them than their PATOIS to
me. 'There are a dozen horsemen in the old castle there, are there not?'

The man stilled his wife, who continued to chatter and mow at us, and
answered eagerly that there were; adding, with a trembling oath, that
the robbers had beaten him, robbed him of his small store of meal, and
when he would have protested, thrown him out, breaking his leg.

'Then how came you here?' I said.

'She brought me on her back,' he answered feebly.

Doubtless there were men in my train who would have done all that these
others had done; but hearing the simple story told, they stamped and
swore great oaths of indignation; and one, the roughest of the party,
took out some black bread and gave it to the woman, whom under other
circumstances he would not have hesitated to rob. Maignan, w