"Ban you with bell, book and candle! Your tongue is too sharp, my girl!" he snarled, but did not linger long, finding the flashing glance, the contemptuous mien, or the truth of her words, little to his liking. That he profited not by the last, however, was soon evident, as with amulets and talismans for a bargain, again he moved among the crowd, conjuring by a full calendar of saints, real and imaginary, and professing to excommunicate, in an execrable confusion of monkish gibberish, where the people could not, or would not, comply with his demands. "So they _are_--poor enough!" Leaning on a stick, an aged fishwife who had drawn near and overheard part of the dialogue between the thrifty rogue and the girl, now shook her withered head. "Yet still to be cozened! Never too poor to be cozened!" she repeated in shrill falsetto tones. "And why," sharply my lady turned to the crone, "why are they so poor? The lands are rich--the soil fertile." "Why?" more shrilly. "You must come from some far-off place not to know. Why? Don't you, also, have to pay _métayage_ to some great lord? And _banalité_ here, and _banalité_ there, until--" "But surely, if you applied to your great lord, your Governor; if you told him--" "If we told him!" Brokenly the woman laughed. "Yes; yes; of course; if--" "I don't understand," said the Governor's daughter coldly. Muttering and chuckling, the woman did not seem to hear; had started to hobble on, when abruptly the girl stopped her. "Where do you live?" "There!" A claw-like finger pointed. "On the old Seigneur's lands--a little distance from the woods--" "The old Seigneur? You knew him?" "Knew him! Who better?" The whitened head wagged. "And the Black Seigneur? Wasn't he left, as a child, with me, when the old Seigneur went to America? And," pursing her thin lips, "didn't I care for him, and bring him up as one of my own?" "But I thought--I heard that he, the Black Seigneur, when a boy, lived in the woods." "That," answered the old creature, "was after. After the years he lived with us and shared our all! Not that we begrudged--no, no! Nor he! For once when I sent word, pleading our need, that we were starving, he forgave--I mean, remembered me--all I had done and," in a wheedling voice, "sent money--money--" "He did?" Swiftly the girl reached for her own purse, only to discover she had forgotten to bring one. "But of course," in a tone of disappointment at her oversight, "he couldn't very well forget or desert one who had so generously befriended him." "There are those now among his friends he must needs desert," the crone cackled, wagging her head. A shadow crossed the girl's brow. "Must needs?" she repeated. "Aye, forsooth! His comrades--taken prisoners near the island of Casque? His Excellency will hang them till they're dead--dead, like some I've seen dangling from the branches in the wood. He, the Black Seigneur, may wish to save them; but what can he do?"