And, indeed, all looked grave at my account, and Hugo shook his head, and he and the abbot and Martin and Richard had long and anxious converse in the Castle, and already we were bid to move very many of our holy things that bedecked the Church, or were used in God’s service, within the Castle wall, and the builders had set up among the ramparts long sheds of wood, wherein began to be stored all manner of com, brought in from all the granaries around.

For the abbot had received from St. Michael’s Mount and other places on the Breton coast most portentous accounts of a gathering together of the pirates of the sea and marauders of the land, and that some devil’s bond had been forged between them, and that the wildest and most daring of these villains of every race and land had elected as their chief captain one whom they named “the Grand Sarrasin,” one born of that black race, the deadliest enemy of Christendom.  Others called him “Le Grand Geoffroy” as though they would save him at least from the black stamp of Paynim birth; but for us he was ever the Grand Sarrasin, and still the Grand Sarrasin, cursed a hundred times a day by every tongue in our cloister and island.

Now, as I saw Brother Hugo on the ramparts and knew, though full of matters now, he grudged not a word to us lads whom he loved full well, I spake to him thus—­

“What news to-day, brother, of ’Le Grand Sarrasin’?” I spake half in jest indeed, for long ere this, this very brother had made great sport of pirates and their dark deeds, and especially, ere this name I spake had risen to such a sound of evil omen, had he delighted to tease the children of the cloister therewith.  As on some dangerous path he would whisper, “Go not that way for fear of Le Grand Sarrasin!” or out in the fishing-smack, he would point to some cosy, full-bottomed trading ship with a “Hist, lads, the great Geoffroy there astern!” But now Brother Hugo liked not the jest, but looked sternly at me from beneath his great brows.

“Le Grand Sarrasin!” said he, “if so thou lovest to call the vilest foam of filth on these Norman seas, this day last week rode into St. Brieuc by night with eighteen ships, climbed into the fort, none letting him, slit the throat of a sentinel and warder, barred the garrison into its own quarters, and poured like a midnight pestilence through the streets, bidding his Paynim hounds of slaughter, without pity and without fear, enter where they listed, and that they did.  And there by night in St. Brieuc, good men and good wives, who never harmed man or beast were knifed as they lay, the young maids led captive, and the babes flung like useless baggage through windows into the gutter, and that is the last I have heard of Le Grand Sarrasin!” said Brother Hugo, sadly enough.

I stood beside him silently, and the salt tears burst painfully under my eyelids as I heard the fate of that poor town by the Breton coast.

“Ay, weep, lad, weep!” he said.  “And God give strength to our arms to show him better than tears, if he come our way, this fiend that fears not God nor man.”