Around and around rose applause, though indeed no immoderate storm of sound. Stephen the Marshal was a valiant man. But there was enough to let one say that nothing lacked. The duke turned his horse from side to side, just bowed his head in its pointed helmet. Then, as the custom was, a wreath of silken flowers and leaves was placed upon the point of his spear. He made the stallion to curvet and caracole, and then to pace slowly around the lists. A body of jongleurs began to play with enthusiasm as passionate a love-air as they knew. All Roche-de-Frêne, town and castle—all the barons and ladies from afar—all the knights who jousted—all watched to see the duke lay the wreath at the feet of the young princess—watched to see if he would lay it there. If he did it might be said to announce that here, if he might, he would wed. The duke rode around the lists; then before the wide platform of state and the centre of that platform, before the chairs set arow upon a rich Eastern rug and canopied with silk, he checked the black stallion, and, lowering his lance, let the wreath slip from it and rest at the feet of certainly the most beautiful woman there, Gaucelm’s princess, the dazzling Alazais. CHAPTER IX GARIN SEEKS HIS FORTUNE ONE day, from sunrise to sunset, Garin kept company with the train of the Abbot of Saint Pamphilius. As the day dropped toward eve the road touched a stream that, reflecting the western sky, blushed like a piece of coral. It was the monks’ home stream. The ford passed, their abbey would ere long rise before them. Some were tired of travel and had been homesick for garden and refectory, cell and chapel—homesick as a dog for its master, a child for its mother, a plant for its sunshine. Some were not tired of travel and were not homesick. So there were both glad and sorry in the fellowship that, midway of the ford, checked the fat abbey mules and horses to let them drink. The beasts stooped their necks to the pink water; monks and lay brothers and abbey knaves looked at the opposite slope. When they reached its crest they would see before them Saint Pamphilius, grey and rich. The abbot’s mule drank first as was proper, raised its head first, and with a breath of satisfaction splashed forward. The two monks immediately attendant upon the Reverend Father must pull up their horses’ heads before they had half drunken and follow their superior. The abbot, mounting the gently shelving bank, looked at his sons in God, yet dotting the small bright river. He just checked his mule. “That limping youth is no longer in our company.” The monk nearest him spoke. “Reverend Father, as we came through the wood a mile back, he gave Brother Anselm thanks, then slipped from behind him. Brother Bartholomew called to him, but he went away among the trees.” “Ah!” said the abbot; “in which direction?” “Reverend Father, southwardly.”