“It is the house,” said the tallest of the four, “stand well back within the shade!”

“Nay, Sholto, what need?” grumbled another, a very thickset palmer he; “if the maids be within, let us burst the gates, and go and take them out!”

“Be silent, Malise,” put in the third pilgrim, whose dress of richer stuff than that of his companions, added to an air of natural command, betrayed the man of superior rank, “remember, great jolterhead, that we are not at the gates of Edinburgh with all the south country at our backs.”

The fourth, a slender youth and fresh of countenance, stood somewhat behind the first three, without speaking, and wore an air of profound meditation and abstraction.

It is not difficult to identify three out of the four.  Sholto’s quest for his sweetheart was a thing fixed and settled.  That his father and his brother Laurence should accompany him was also to be expected.  But the other and more richly attired was somewhat less easy to be certified.  The Lord James of Douglas it was, who spoke French with the idiomatic use and easy accentuation of a native, albeit of those central provinces which had longest owned the sway of the King of France.  The brothers MacKim also spoke the language of the country after a fashion.  For many Frenchmen had come over to Galloway in the trains of the first two Dukes of Touraine, so that the Gallic speech was a common accomplishment among the youths who sighed to adventure where so many poor Scots had won fortune, in the armies of the Kings of France.

Indeed, throughout the centuries Paris cannot be other than Paris.  And Paris was more than ever Paris in the reign of Charles the Seventh.  Her populace, gay, fickle, brave, had just cast off the yoke of the English, and were now venting their freedom from stern Saxon policing according to their own fashion.  Not the King of France, but the Lord of Misrule held the sceptre in the capital.

It was not long therefore before a band of rufflers swung round a corner arm-in-arm, taking the whole breadth of the narrow causeway with them as they came.  It chanced that their leader espied the four Scots standing in the wide doorway of the house opposite the Hotel de Pornic.

“Hey, game lads,” he cried, in that roistering shriek which then passed for dashing hardihood among the youth of Paris, “here be some holy men, pilgrims to the shrine of Saint Denis, I warrant.  I, too, am a clerk of a sort, for Henriet tonsured me on Wednesday sennight.  Let us see if these men of good works carry any of the deceitful vanities of earth about with them in their purses.  Sometimes such are not ill lined!”

The youths accepted the proposal of their leader with alacrity.

“Let us have the blessing of the holy palmers,” they cried, “and eke the contents of their pockets!”

So with a gay shout, and in an evil hour for themselves, they bore down upon the four Scots.