Thomas from the water; but thereof I said no word, for indeed my dreams were haunted by his hooded face, like that of the snake which, as travellers tell, wears a hood in Prester John’s country, and is the most venomous of beasts serpentine.  So concerning Brother Thomas I held my peace, and the barque, swinging round a corner of the bank, soon brought us into a country with no sign of war on it, and here the poplar-trees had not been felled for planks to make bulwarks, but whispered by the riverside.

The wide stream carried many a boat, and shone with sails, white, and crimson, and brown; the boat-men sang, or hailed each other from afar.  There was much traffic, stores being carried from Blois to the army.  Some mile or twain above Beaugency we were forced to land, and, I being borne in a litter, we took a cross-path away from the stream, joining it again two miles below Beaugency, because the English held that town, though not for long.  The sun had set, yet left all his gold shining on the water when we entered Blois, and there rested at a hostel for the night.  Next day—­one of the goodliest of my life, so soft and clear and warm it was, yet with a cool wind on the water—­we voyaged to Tours; and now Elliot was glad enough, making all manner of mirth.

Her desire, she said, was to meet a friend that she had left at their house in Tours, one that she had known as long as she knew me, my friend he was too, yet I had never spoken of him, or asked how he did.  Now I, being wrapped up wholly in her, and in my joy to see her kind again, and so beautiful, had no memory of any such friend, wherefore she mocked me, and rebuked me for a hard heart and ungrateful.  “This friend of mine,” she said, “was the first that made us known each to other.  Yea, but for him, the birds might have pecked out your eyne, and the ants eaten your bones bare, yet”—­with a sudden anger, and tears in her eyes at the words she spoke—­“you have clean forgotten him!”

“Ah, you mean the jackanapes.  And how is the little champion?”

“Like the lads of Wamfray, aye for ill, and never for good,” said my master; but she frowned on him, and said—­

“Now you ask, because I forced you on it; but, sir, I take it very ill that you have so short a memory for a friend.  Now, tell me, in all the time since you left us at Chinon, how often have you thought of him?”

“Nigh as often as I thought of you,” I answered.  “For when you came into my mind (and that was every minute), as in a picture, thither too came your playfellow, climbing and chattering, and holding out his little bowl for a comfit.”

“Nay, then you thought of me seldom, or you would have asked how he does.”