"I should be glad to greet the gallows now, but I have a deed to do before I die." As he spoke the great bell of the palace beat out the first stroke of the hour of nine. It roused the wounded spirit in his soul. He moved to where Katherine stood and spoke to her: "I dreamed that love through which I have been born again could lift me to your lips. The dream is over. But you bade me serve France, and I ride and fight for you to-night." While he spoke the Lords of Lau, of Eiviere and of Nantoillet in panoply of war came from the palace with their immediate followers. The garden began to fill with the picked men of the enterprise hurrying on the summons of the warning bell to follow their leader on his sortie. Villon's pages brought the armour of the Grand Constable and began to buckle it upon him. While this was being done, he turned and spoke to his brothers-in-arms: "Comrades, let each man carry himself to-night as if the fate of France depended upon his heart, his arm, his courage. Strike for the mothers that bore you, the wives that comfort you, the children that Renéw you--the women that love you." For a moment his voice quailed and almost failed him. There were happy men there, no doubt, whom women loved. But he rallied in a breath and his voice rang out valiantly again: "Forward in God's name and the king's!" And every soldier present echoed him: "Forward in God's name and the king's!" CHAPTER XIII THE REDE OF FIVE RIDING ROGUES Through the silent streets of Paris a slender line of steel moved slowly--the thread of which Master François Villon was the needle pricked to sew the realm of France together. The Grand Constable rode at the head with the Lords of Lau, of Riviere, and of Nantoillet, and somewhere at the tail rode the five released rascals and babbled beneath their breaths as they rode. For the order to keep silence did not count until the gates of Paris were reached and began to turn on their hinges to let Villon's adventurers forth. Every man of the ruffians had a stout sword swinging at his girdle; every man of them sported a steel cap upon his head; every man of them felt his heart pulsing with rare emotions and his brain busy with strange thoughts. René de Montigny spoke first the thing that filled his mind. "It must be a devil of a business," he reflected, "to be bullied like that by a beauty. Blood, but she is beautiful, and blood, but she can bellow." Guy Tabarie chuckled fatly. "I have been bullied so many times by grey-faced drabs that I would take my trouncing patiently from such a pair of lips. It was meat and drink to look at her and think thoughts." Jehan le Loup frowned sourly. "Had I been Master François and black Louis not been by I should have tried to mend my luck with a cudgel. At best and worst she would have had something to curse for after a lusty thumping."