Whether further discussion might have thrown any more light upon these ghostly sounds who can tell? for up came a "bearded brother" from the monastery, spurring his mule, and waving a piece of vellum in his hand. It was the deed between Ghysbrecht and Floris Brandt. Gerard valued it deeply as a remembrance of home: he turned pale at first but to think he had so nearly lost it, and to Denys's infinite amusement not only gave a piece of money to the lay brother, but kissed the mule's nose. "I'll read you now," said Gerard "were you twice as ill written; and--to make sure of never losing you"--here he sat down and taking out needle and thread sewed it with feminine dexterity to his doublet, and his mind, and heart, and soul were away to Sevenbergen. They reached the promised land, and Denys, who was in high spirits, doffed his bonnet to all the females; who curtsied and smiled in return; fired his consigne at most of the men; at which some stared, some grinned, some both; and finally landed his friend at one of the long-promised Burgundian inns. "It is a little one," said he, "but I know it of old for a good one; 'Les Trois Poissons.' But what is this writ up? I mind not this:" and he pointed to an inscription that ran across the whole building in a single line of huge letters. "Oh I see. 'Ici on loge à pied et à cheval,'" said Denys going minutely through the inscription, and looking bumptious when he had effected it. Gerard did look, and the sentence in question ran thus-- "ON NE LOGE CÉANS À CRÉDIT: CE BONHOMME EST MORT, LES MAUVAIS PAIEURS L'ONT TUÉ." CHAPTER XXXIII THEY met the landlord in the passage. "Welcome, messieurs," said he taking off his cap with a low bow. "Come, we are not in Germany," said Gerard. In the public room they found the mistress, a buxom woman of forty. She curtsied to them and smiled right cordially. "Give yourself the trouble of sitting ye down, fair sir," said she to Gerard, and dusted two chairs with her apron, not that they needed it. "Thank you, dame," said Gerard. "Well," thought he, "this _is_ a polite nation: the trouble of sitting down? That will I with singular patience; and presently the labour of eating, also the toil of digestion, and finally, by Hercules his aid, the strain of going to bed, and the struggle of sinking fast asleep." "Why, Denys, what are you doing? ordering supper for only two?" "Why not?" "What can we sup without waiting for forty more? Burgundy for ever!" "Aha! Courage, camarade. Le dia--" "C'est convenu." The salique law seemed not to have penetrated to French inns. In this one at least wimple and kirtle reigned supreme; doublets and hose were few in number and feeble in act. The landlord himself wandered objectless, eternally taking off his cap to folk for want of thought; and the women, as they passed him in turn, thrust him quietly aside without looking at him, as we remove a live twig in bustling through a wood.