"Why, Sir Walter," he exclaimed, "what good saint has brought you here? I have but an hour since received a message from the Count of Evreux to the effect that you were a prisoner in the hands of Sir Philip de Holbeaut, with whom I must treat for your ransom. I was purporting to send off a herald to-morrow to ask at what sum he held you; and now you appear in flesh and blood before us! But first, before you tell us your story, I must congratulate you on your gallant defense of the Castle of Près, which is accounted by all as one of the most valiant deeds of the war. When two days passed without a messenger from you coming hither, I feared that you were beleaguered, and started that evening with six hundred men-at-arms. We arrived at daybreak, to find only a smoking ruin. Luckily among the crowd of dead upon the breach we found one of your men-at-arms who still breathed, and after some cordial had been given him, and his wounds stanched, he was able to tell us the story of the siege. But it needed not his tale to tell us how stanchly you had defended the castle, for the hundreds of dead who lay outside of the walls, and still more the mass who piled the breach, and the many who lay in the castle yard spoke for themselves of the valor with which the castle had been defended. As the keep was gutted by fire, and the man could tell us naught of what had happened after he had been stricken down at the breach, we knew not whether you and your brave garrison had perished in the flames. We saw the penthouse beneath which they had labored to cut through the wall, but the work had ceased before the holes were large enough for entry, and we hoped that you might have seen that further resistance was in vain, and have made terms for your lives; indeed we heard from the country people that certain prisoners had been taken to Amiens. I rested one day at Près, and the next rode back here, and forthwith dispatched a herald to the Count of Evreux at Amiens asking for news of the garrison; but now he has returned with word that twenty-four men-at-arms and fifty-eight archers are prisoners in the count's hands, and that he is ready to exchange them against an equal number of French prisoners; but that you, with a man-at-arms, were in the keeping of Sir Philip of Holbeaut, with whom I must treat for your ransom. And now tell me how it is that I see you here. Has your captor, confiding in your knightly word to send him the sum agreed upon, allowed you to return? Tell me the sum and my treasurer shall to-morrow pay it over to a herald, who shall carry it to Holbeaut." "Thanks, your royal highness, for your generosity," Walter replied, "but there is no ransom to be paid." And he then proceeded to narrate the incidents of his captivity at Holbeaut and his escape from the castle. His narration was frequently interrupted by exclamations of surprise and indignation from the prince and the knights present.