to oust him.  The property belonged to one who had been a cause of much offence, and perchance that weighed with Sir John and made him less willing to bestir himself in the matter.  But be that as it may, nothing had been done when Arnald de Brocas breathed his last; and his wife, when she heard the tale, looked at you two young children as you lay upon the grass at play, and she said with a sigh and a smile, ’Father, I will wait till my boys be grown, for what can one weak woman do alone? and then we will go together to the land that is mine by birth, and my boys shall win back for me and for themselves the lost inheritance of Basildene.’”

“And so we will!” cried Gaston, with flashing eyes; “and so we will!  Here as I stand I vow that we will win it back from the false and coward kinsman who holds it now.”

“Ay,” answered Raymond, with equal ardour and enthusiasm, “that, Brother, will we do; and we will win for ourselves the name that she herself gave to us —­ The Twin Brothers of Basildene.”

CHAPTER III.  THE UNKNOWN WORLD.

So that was the story of their past.  That was why they two, with the blood of the De Brocas running in their veins, had lived all their past lives in the seclusion of a humble mill; why they had known nothing of their kinsfolk, albeit they had always known that they must have kindred of their own name and race; and why their mother upon her deathbed had spoken to them not of any inheritance that they might look to claim from descent through their father, but of Basildene, which was theirs in very right, as it had been hers before, till her ambitious and unscrupulous kinsman had driven her forth.

And now what should they do?  Whither should they go; and what should be the object of the lives —­ the new lives of purpose and resolve which had awakened within them?

Gaston had given voice to this feeling in vowing them to the attempt to recover their lost heritage of Basildene, and Father Anselm did not oppose either that desire or the ardent wish of the youths to fare forth into the great world alone.

“My sons,” he said a few days later, when he had come to see if the twins held yet to their first resolve.  “You are something young as yet to sally forth into the unknown world and carve for yourselves your fortunes there; but nevertheless I trow the day has come, for this place is no longer a safe shelter for you.  The Sieur de Navailles, as it is told me, is already searching for you.  It cannot be long before he finds your hiding place, and then no man may call your lives safe by night or day.  And not only would ye yourselves be in peril, but peril would threaten good Jean and Margot; and methinks you would be sorely loath that harm should come to them through the faithful kindness they have ever shown to you and yours.”