Casin Cholet licked his lips. "I shall think of her," he said, "when next I meet with a sweetheart. With a little wit your honest rascal can be as happy as a king. In the dark all fur is of the same colour." Oolin de Cayeulx yawned. "What are we going a-riding for?" he questioned. "I would sooner have stayed in the king's rose garden and filled my belly as we did last week when the great lord in gold tissue pitied us. And to think that it was no more than François after all! I could jam my dagger between his shoulder-blades for making such a ninny of me." "I knew him all the time," Guy Tabarie was beginning when René de Montigny silenced him with a ringing clip on the nearest ear which nearly unsaddled the fat rogue. "You lie, Mountain, you lie," he whispered. "Do you think that if he cheated me your pig's eyes could read the riddle? No, no, he fooled us fairly and he fooled us well, but he treated us kindly and we can afford to cry quits." "A strange thing," mused Colin, "that a trifle of hair less on a man's chin and a trifle of dirt less on a man's cheek, with some matter of clean linen and a smooth jerkin, can make such a difference." "Not at all," said René de Montigny," we are all the same at the core, every man-jack and woman-jill of us, hungering, thirsting, lusting, just after the same fashion. 'Tis only the coat that counts." "'Tis you who lie now," grunted Tabarie. "There's no gold tissue in the world that would make you as cunning as François. You would never have done as he did if the king had made you the pick of the litter." Rend whistled through his teeth. "May be so, may be not," he said. "No man can tell what he may do till he is given his chance to test his mettle. Oh opportunity, golden opportunity! If I were François Villon I would shape an image of gold in your name and praise you for a saint." "I wonder what that girl will say," mused Tabarie, "if our François comes back with the Duke of Burgundy in his pocket!" "I wonder what she will say," sneered Jehan le Loup, "if he trundles back feet foremost with a hole in his body and half a head." "Whatever happens is sure to vex her," said Casin Cholet. "Women are made that way." "Our poor minions will be lonely to-night," said Colin. "I doubt it," said René de Montigny drily, and then he sighed a little. "Poor Abbess!" Sudden tears smeared Tabarie's fat cheeks. "She was a brave wench if ever," he snivelled. "Through wellfare or illfare she was always the same, and would share board and blanket with a friend though his pouch were as barren as Sarah's body." "It was ten thousand pities," said Eene, "that she fell so love-sick for François. Did he give her some philtre, some elixir, do you think? François is a fine fellow though, I'll not deny it, but he's had the devil's own luck, and by our patron St. Nicholas there be others as fine as he."