Wogan bowed to O’Toole’s wisdom and took back the snuff-box.  “I will not forget to promise it,” said he.

“But here’s another point,” said Gaydon.  “Her Highness, the Princess’s mother, insists that a woman shall attend upon her daughter, and where shall we find a woman with the courage and the strength?”

“I have thought of that,” said Wogan.  “Misset has a wife.  By the luckiest stroke in the world Misset took a wife this last spring.”

There was at once a complete silence.  Gaydon stared into the fire, O’Toole looked with intense interest at the ceiling, Misset buried his face in his hands.  Wogan was filled with consternation.  Was Misset’s wife dead? he asked himself.  He had spoken lightly, laughingly, and he went hot and cold as he recollected the raillery of his words.  He sat in his chair shocked at the pain which he had caused his friend.  Moreover, he had counted surely upon Mrs. Misset.

Then Misset raised his head from his hands and in a trembling voice he said slowly, “My boy would only live to serve his King.  Why should he not serve his King before he lives?  My wife will say the like.”

There was a depth of quiet feeling in his words which Wogan would never have expected from Misset; and the words themselves were words which he felt no man, no king, however much beloved, however generous to his servants, had any right to expect.  They took Wogan’s breath away, and not Wogan’s only, but Gaydon’s and O’Toole’s, too.  A longer silence than before followed upon them.  The very simplicity with which they had been uttered was startling, and made those three men doubt at the first whether they had heard aright.

O’Toole was the first to break the silence.

“It is a strange thing that there never was a father since Adam who was not absolutely sure in his heart that his first-born must be a boy.  When you come to think philosophically about it, you’ll see that if fathers had their way the world would be peopled with sons with never a bit of a lass in any corner to marry them.”

O’Toole’s reflection, if not a reason for laughter, made a pretext for it, at which all—­even Misset, who was a trifle ashamed of his display of feeling—­eagerly caught.  Wogan held his hand out and clasped Misset’s.

“That was a great saying,” said he, “but so much sacrifice is not to be accepted.”

Misset, however, was firm.  His wife, he said, though naturally timid, could show a fine spirit on occasion, and would never forgive one of them if she was left behind.  He argued until a compromise was reached.  Misset should lay the matter openly before his wife, and the four crusaders, to use Wogan’s term, would be bound by her decision.

“So you may take it that matter’s settled,” said Misset.  “There will be five of us.”

“Six,” said Wogan.

“There’s another man to join us, then,” said Gaydon.  “I have it.  Your servant, Marnier.”