To-day the eleventh day of the month of June, of the year 1035, I, Den-Brao add this post-script to the above lines that I appended to my father's narrative. I have to record a sad event. The work on the castle of Mont-Ferrier not being concluded before the winter of 1034, the bailiff of the seigneur, shortly after my father's death proposed to me to resume work in the spring. I accepted. I love my trade. Moreover, my family felt less wretched here than in Compiegne, and I was not as anxious as my father to return to Britanny where, after all, there may be no member of our family left. I accepted the bailiff's offer, and continued to work upon the buildings, that are now completed. The last piece of work I did was to finish up a secret issue that leads outside of the castle. Yesterday the bailiff came to me and said: "One of the allies of the seigneur of Mont-Ferrier, who is just now on a visit at the castle, expressed great admiration for the work that you did, and as he is thinking of improving the fortifications of his own manor, he offered the count our master to exchange you for a serf who is a skillful armorer, and whom we need. The matter was settled between them." "But I am not a serf of the seigneur of Mont-Ferrier," I interposed; "I agreed to work here of my own free will." The bailiff shrugged his shoulders and replied: "The law says--_every man who is not a Frank, and who lives a year and a day upon the land of a seigneur, becomes a serf and the property of the said seigneur, and as such is subject to taille at will and mercy_. You have lived here since the tenth day of June of the year 1034; we are now at the eleventh day of June of the year 1035; you have lived a year and a day on the land of the seigneur of Mont-Ferrier; you are now his serf; you belong to him, and he has the right to exchange you for a serf of the seigneur of Plouernel. Drop all thought of resisting our master's will. Should you kick up your heels, Neroweg IV, seigneur and count of Plouernel, will order you tied to the tail of his horse, and drag you in that way as far as his castle." I would have resigned myself to my new condition without much grief, but for one circumstance. For forty years I lived a serf on the domain of Compiegne, and it mattered little to me whether I exercised my trade of masonry in one seigniory or another. But I remember that my father told me that he had it from his grandfather Guyrion how an old family of the name of Neroweg, established in Gaul since the conquest of Clovis, had ever been fatal to our own. I felt a sort of terror at the thought of finding myself the serf of a descendant of the Terrible Eagle--that first of the Nerowegs that crossed our path. May heaven ordain it so that my forebodings prove unfounded! May heaven ordain, my dear son Nominoe, that you shall not have to register on this parchment aught but the date of my death and these few words: