"Ah, my son," he murmured gently, as he drew back the curtain by the side of the patient’s bed and seated himself by his side, "it is well. I see that you have already benefited by my salves and ointments, and perchance"—he paused, smiling, as he read the hundred questions in the eager face turned to him—"you are doubtless as anxious, my son," he added kindly, "to know under whose roof you are resting, as we are to inquire what brought a stranger to wander unattended in our forest of Arteze?" There was no hiding the anxiety in the old man’s eyes as he awaited the answer to his question, and the sick man smiled as he replied— "Perchance you had e’en taken me for a spy of the King of France? No, no, father, the d’Estrailles of d’Estrailles have never yet stooped to so vile a task, and, by our Lady’s help, will never so soil one of the proudest scutcheons in France; my errand here in Brittany was the Count Dunois’ business, for I rode in his train to Rennes on an embassy to your Duchess from my master, but losing my way in this so dreary and perilous country, I had nearly met my fate at the hand of an unruly tree stump, had it not been, I ween, for the unknown benefactor who has played the good Samaritan." Father Ambrose drew a sigh of relief. "’Twill be good news to my lord," he said heartily, "as also to the fair Demoiselle de Mereac, who pleaded so prettily with her father that you were no spy, that he was fain to spare you from the hanging which Monsieur de Coray deemed your fittest end." A flush of anger deepened on the young man’s cheek. "Parbleu!" he cried softly, "Breton justice indeed, to hang an unconscious man because, forsooth! he rides unattended and cannot speak for himself! This monsieur——" "Nay," interrupted the priest, laying a soothing hand upon the other’s clenched fist. "Calm yourself, my son, or I fear you will suffer ill from fever to your hurts. Be patient, and I will tell you how it chanced, as the demoiselle herself told me," he added, smiling. "And the demoiselle?" questioned d’Estrailles eagerly, as the priest concluded his tale of the brief episode which had been so near to terminating his career. "She is without doubt the angel who anon looked down upon me as I lay a-wondering, and who did so far entangle my thoughts that I deemed I must have reached Paradise itself?" "She is a good maid and a beautiful," said the old priest, with a touch of asperity in his tones. "Moreover," he added, with a smiling glance askance at his interrogator, "she is betrothed to her kinsman, Monsieur Guillaume de Coray." "De Coray?" echoed the young Frenchman with scorn. "What! the hound who would have strung me to the first tree because, parbleu! I had not the honour of his acquaintance? Nay, father, so sweet and gentle a maid would ill mate with so unknightly a spouse!"