The trembling innkeeper said he would do that, and did it. And so, when the man in black rode into Rouen the next evening, he did not ride alone. He was attended at a respectful distance by a good-looking page clad in sable velvet, and mounted on a handsome grey horse. CHAPTER III. MAN AND WIFE. It is a pleasant thing to be warmly clad and to lie softly, and at night to be in shelter and in the day to eat and drink. But all these things may be dearly bought, and so the boy Jehan de Bault soon found. He was no longer beaten, chained, or starved; he lay in a truckle bed instead of a stable; the work he had to do was of the lightest. But he paid for all in fears--in an ever-present, abiding, mastering fear of the man behind whom he rode: who never scolded, never rated, nor even struck him, but whose lightest word--and much more, his long silences--filled the lad with dread and awe unspeakable. Something sinister in the man's face, all found; but to Jehan, who never doubted his dark powers, and who shrank from his eye, and flinched at his voice, and cowered when he spoke, there was a cold malevolence in the face, an evil knowledge, that made the boy's flesh creep and chained his soul with dread. The astrologer saw this, and revelled in it, and went about to increase it after a fashion of his own. Hearing the boy, on an occasion when he had turned to him suddenly, ejaculate "_Oh, Dieu!_" he said, with a dreadful smile, "You should not say that! Do you know why?" The boy's face grew a shade paler, but he did not speak. "Ask me why! Say, 'Why not?'" "Why not?" Jehan muttered. He would have given the world to avert his eyes, but he could not. "Because you have sold yourself to the devil!" the other hissed. "Others may say it; you may not. What is the use? You have sold yourself--body, soul, and spirit. You came of your own accord, and climbed on the black horse. And now," he continued, in a tone which always compelled obedience, "answer my questions. What is your name?" "Jehan de Bault," the boy whispered, shivering and shuddering. "Louder!" "Jehan de Bault." "Repeat the story you told at the fair." "I am Jehan de Bault, Seigneur of--I know not where, and Lord of seventeen lordships in the County of Perigord, of a most noble and puissant family, possessing the High Justice, the Middle, and the Low. In my veins runs the blood of Roland, and of my forefathers were three marshals of France. I stand here, the last of my race; in token whereof may God preserve my mother, the King, France, and this Province." "Ha! In the County of Perigord!" the astrologer said, with a sudden lightening of his heavy brows. "You have remembered that?" "Yes. I heard the word at Fécamp." "And all that is true?" "Yes." "Who taught it you?" "I do not know." The boy's face, in its straining, was painful to see. "What is the first thing you can remember?" "A house in a wood."