"I should be in his shoes and he in mine! Lord, what a fool!" with gloomy unction. "What a fool! I must needs think of _her_ when a peasant girl would not look at me. I must needs think of the Countess of Rochechouart! Oh, Lord, as if I had anything to give her! Or aught I could do for her!" Bonne did not reply on the instant, But presently, "There is something you can do for her," she ventured. "It is not much, but----" "What?" he said. "I know nothing." "You can help him." "I?" "The mouse helped the lion. You can help him and be at his side, and guard him in danger--for her sake. Just as," Bonne continued, her voice sinking a little, "if you were a girl, and--and felt for him as you feel for her, you could watch over her and protect her and keep her safe--for his sake. Though it would be harder for a woman, because women are jealous," Bonne added thoughtfully. "And men too!" Roger rejoined from the depths of his small experience. "All the same I will do it. And I am glad it is he. He won't beat her, or shut her up and leave her in some lonely house as Court people do. I believe," he continued gloomily, "I'd as soon it was he as any one." Bonne nodded. "That is agreed then," she said softly, though a moment before she had sighed. "Agreed?" rather grumpily. "Well, if one person can agree, it is!" And then, thinking he had spoken thanklessly to the sister who had been his friend and consoler in many a dark hour when the shadow of his deformity had hidden the sun, he laid his hand on hers and pressed it. "Well, agreed it is!" he said more brightly. "They came from their outside world to our poor little life, and we must help them back again, I suppose. I would not wish them ill, if--if it would make me straight again." "That is a big bribe," she said, smiling. "But neither would I--if it would make me as handsome as Odette!" "No!" They sat silent then. Far away on their left, where lay the entrance to the camp from the river gorge, men were piling stones under the archway, so as to leave but a narrow passage. Below them on the right the Bat was drilling his pikemen, and alternately launching his lank form this way and that in a fever of impatience. On the sky-line men were pacing to and fro, searching with keen eyes the misty distance of glen and hill; and ever and anon the squeal of a war-horse rang above the multitudinous sounds of the camp. On every side, wherever the eye rested, it discovered signs of strife and turmoil, harbingers of pain and death.