As the three Scots looked into the stockaded entrance of the village, they could see the children playing on the long, irregular street, and the elder folk sitting about their doors in the evening light.

But as soon as the clatter of horses’ hoofs was heard, borne from far down the aisles of the forest, there arose a sudden clamour and a crying.  From each little sparred enclosure rushed forth a woman who snatched a baby here and there and drove a herd of children before her indoors, glancing around and behind her as she did so with the anxious look of a motherly barn-door fowl when the hawk hangs poised in the windless sky.

By the time the three men had entered the gate and ridden up the village street, all was silent and dark.  The windows were shut, the doors were barred, and the village had become a street of living tombs.

“What means this?” said the Lord James; “the people are surely afraid of us.”

“’Tis doubtless but their wonted welcome to their lord, the Sieur de Retz.  He seems to be popular wherever he goes,” said Malise, grimly; “but let us dismount and see if we can get stabling for our beasts.  Did they not tell us there was not another house for miles betwixt here and Machecoul?”

So without waiting for dissent or counter opinion, the master armourer went directly up to the door of the most respectable-appearing house in the village, one which stood a little back from the road and was surrounded by a wall.  Here he dismounted and knocked loudly with his sword-hilt upon the outer gate.  The noise reverberated up and down the street, and was tossed back in undiminished volume from the green wall of pines which hemmed in the village.

But there was no answer, and Malise grew rapidly weary of his own clamour.

“Hold my bridle,” he said curtly to Sholto, and with a single push of his shoulders he broke the wooden bar, and the two halves of the outer gate fell apart before him.  A great, smooth-haired yellow dog of the country rushed furiously at the intruders, but Malise, who was as dexterous as he was powerful, received him with so sound a buffet on the head that he paused bewildered, shaking his ears, whereat Malise picked him up, tucked him under his arm, and with thumbs about his windpipe effectually choked his barking.  Then releasing him, Malise took no further notice of this valorous enemy, and the poor, loyal, baffled beast, conscious of defeat, crept shamefacedly away to hide his disgrace among the faggots.

But Malise was growing indignant and therefore dangerous and ill to cross.

“Never did I see such mannerless folk,” he growled; “they will not even give a stranger a word or a bite for his beast.”

Then he called to his companions, “Come hither and speak to these cravens ere I burst their inner doors as well.”

At this by no means empty threat came the Lord James and spoke aloud in his cheery voice to those within the silent house:  “Good people, we are no robbers, but poor travellers and strangers.  Be not afraid.  All we want is that you should tell us which house is the inn that we may receive refreshment for ourselves and our horses.”