Gaston’s face cleared, and he smiled frankly enough.

“Nay, Brother, none in the world.  It is only as I think sometimes of the story of our parents’ wrongs that my hot blood seems to rise against them.  They have been kind to us.  I trow we need not fear to take such kindness as may be offered to us as strangers; but to come as suppliant kinsmen, humble and unknown, I neither can nor will.  Let us keep our secret; let us carve out our own fortunes.  A day shall come when we may stand forth before all the world as of the old line of De Brocas, but first we will win for ourselves the welcome we would fain receive.”

“Ay, and we will seek our lost inheritance of Basildene,” added Raymond.  “That shall be our next quest, Gaston.  I would fain look upon our mother’s home.  Methinks it lies not many miles from here.”

“I misdoubt me if Basildene be aught of great moment,” said Gaston, shaking back his curly hair.  “Like enough it is but a Manor such as we have seen by the score as we have ridden through this land.  It may be no such proud inheritance when we do find it, Raymond.  It is of our lost possessions in Gascony that I chiefly think.  What can any English house, of which even here scarce any man has heard, be as compared with our vast forest lands of Gascony —­ our Castle of Saut —­ of Orthez —­ where the false Sieur de Navailles rules with the rod of iron?  It is there that I would be; it is there that I would rule.  When the Roy Outremer wages war with the French King, and I fight beneath his banner and win his favour, as I will do ere many years have passed, and when he calls me to receive my rewards at his kingly hands, then will I tell him of yon false and cruel tyrant there, and how our people groan beneath his harsh rule.  I will ask but his leave to win mine own again, and then I will ride forth with my own knights in my train, and there shall be once again a lord of the old race ruling at Saut, and the tyrant usurper shall be brought to the very dust!”

“Ay,” answered Raymond, with a smile that made his face look older for the moment than that of his twin brother, “thou, Gaston, shalt reign in Saut, and I will try to win and to reign at Basildene, content with the smaller inheritance.  Methinks the quiet English Manor will suit me well.  By thy side for a while will I fight, too, winning, if it may be, my spurs of knighthood likewise; but when the days of fighting be past, I would fain find a quiet haven in this fair land —­ in the very place where our mother longed to end her days.”

It may be seen, from the foregoing fragment of talk, that already the twin brothers were developing in different directions.  So long as they had lived in the quiet of the humble home, they had scarce known a thought or aspiration not shared alike by both; but the experiences of the past months had left a mark upon them, and the mark was not altogether the same in the case of each.  They had shared all