Rossignol drove the flaming torch into the mass of vine-faggots, and instantly up leaped the flame. It ran aloft in the mass, licked and lighted the tallow, it caressed, then exploded the casks of tar, and the whole pyre roared as a beast ravening for its prey. And its prey was given it. With their forks, with staves, the whole flaming, raging mass was cast over the edge after the avalanche of stones had been discharged.[3] [3] The rock castles on the Vézère and the Dordogne all bear traces of having been burnt. History is silent, but tradition among the peasantry is very precise. They state that it was they who, at the close of the Hundred Years' War, ridded themselves of the Free Companies, and that they did it by the means described in this chapter. CHAPTER XI. THE TEN CROSSES. OGIER DEL' PEYRA, with a much larger body of men, murderously, if not well, equipped, had left Ste. Soure an hour after the departure of Jean. The Vézère makes a great sweep to meet the Beune, but, as though disgusted at the insignificance of its tributary, after having received its waters, it at once turns and flows in an almost directly opposite direction, leaving a broad, flat tongue of land round which it curls, a tongue of rich alluvial soil, interspersed with gravel that is purple in autumn with crocus, and in summer blue with salvia. Here the party, headed by Ogier, waited in patience till the signal flashed thrice from the heights opposite, when it was immediately answered by three corresponding flares of dry grass. Then Ogier and his men, under cover of the darkness, moved up the river to the ford, waded across the water, and cautiously crept along the river bank among the osiers in straggling line, till they had reached a suitable point below the "Church." From this point they could see the lights from the windows of that unhallowed edifice shining before them, half-way up the sky like stars, but stars of lurid hue. Then they sat down in the dewy grass and waited. Hour passed after hour. The stars before them waxed faint and went out. Then, suddenly, bringing all to their feet, came the peal of the horn, echoed and re-echoed from every cliff, and followed by a crash and a flare. The scene that ensued was one such as none who witnessed it had ever had a chance of beholding before, or were likely to see again. The immense pile of brushwood and fat and other fuel caught with rapidity and rose in a burst of flame high up, as it were in mid-heaven, followed immediately by its being poured over the lip of the precipice, the molten, blazing tar, the incandescent fat, streaked the cliff as with rivers of light, fell on the projecting roof, ran in through the interstices created by the fall of stones that had shivered the covering tiles, and set fire to the rafters they had protected.