"I furnished you the reason when I delivered to you Morvan's plan of campaign, that was forwarded to me by Kervor, a pious Catholic who came over to the Frankish side and submitted to the authority of our King. He is the chief of the southern tribes whose territory we have just crossed." "I loved to see those people so docile to the priests; they furnished us with supplies, and at your voice knelt down as we passed." "At the time of the other wars you would have dropped fully one-half of your troops in this region so cut up with bogs, hedges and woods. The change between now and then is great. The Catholic faith penetrates little by little these people, formerly so intractable. We have preached to them submission to Louis the Pious, and menaced them with the fires of hell if they attempted to resist your arms." "Indeed, more than one of the troopers of the old bands who fought here at the time of Charles the Great, have told me they could no longer recognize the Bretons, who, in their days, were almost invincible. But for all your explanations, monk, I cannot understand how this pass comes to be abandoned." "And yet nothing is simpler. According to his plan of campaign, Morvan counted with the resistance of the tribes that we have just crossed. In one day, without drawing your sword, you have cleared a track that would otherwise have cost you three days' hard fighting, and a fourth of your troops. Morvan, never apprehending your early arrival at the defile of Glen-Clan, will not think of having it occupied until this evening, or to-morrow. He has not enough forces at his disposal to place them where they would lie idle while he himself is being attacked from two other sides by as many army corps." "To that argument I have nothing to say, my father in Christ, you know the country better than I. If this war succeeds, I shall have my share of the conquered territory; and, according to the promise of Louis the Pious, I shall become a powerful seigneur in Brittany, as my elder brother, Gonthran, is in Auvergne." "And you will not forget to endow the Church." "I shall not be ungrateful to the priests, good father. I shall employ a part of the booty in building a chapel to St. Martin, for whom our family has ever entertained a particular devotion. Could you, who are well acquainted with the customs of the Bretons, tell me what corners they hide their money in? It is claimed that they remove all their treasures when they are forced to flee from their houses, and that they bury them in inaccessible hiding places. Is that so?" "When we shall have arrived in the heart of the country, I shall acquaint you with the means to discover those treasures, which are, almost always, concealed at the foot of certain druid stones, for which these pagans preserve an idolatrous reverence." "But where shall we find those stones? By what signs are they to be recognized?"