Suddenly the low murmur of voices was broken by a new sound, the hurried clang of hoofs, not departing but arriving. There was something in the noise which made the captain prick his ears, and secured for the messenger a speedy passage through the crowd. Even at the last the man did not spare his horse, but spurring to the captain's side, then and then only sprang to the ground. His face was pale, his eyes were bloodshot. His right arm was bound up in bloodstained cloths. With an oath of amazement, the captain recognized the officer whom he had left in charge of Créance and thundered out, "What is it?"
"They have got Créance!" the man gasped, reeling as he spoke. "They have got Créance!"
"Who?" the captain shrieked, his face purple with rage.
"The little man of Béarn! He assaulted it five hundred strong an hour after you left, and had the gate down before we could fire a dozen shots. We did what we could, but we were but one to seven. I swear, captain, we did all we could. Look at this!"
Almost black in the face, the captain swore another frightful oath. It was not only that he saw governorship and honors vanish like will-o'-the-wisps, but that he saw even more quickly that he had made himself the laughing-stock of a kingdom! And he had. To this day among the stories which the southern French love to tell of the prowess and astuteness of the great Henry, there is none more frequently told, or more frequently laughed over, than that of the famous exchange of Créance for Lusigny.
"Eighty-eight when he died! That is a great age," I said.
"Yes indeed. But he was a very clever man, was Robert Evans, Court, and brewed good beer," my companion answered. "His home-brewed was known, I am certain, for more than ten miles. You will have heard of his body-birds, sir?"
"Yes, to be sure. Robert Evans Court's body-birds!" And he looked at me, quick to suspect that his English was deficient. He had learned it in part from books; and hence the curious mixture I presently noted of Welsh idioms and formal English phrases. It was his light trap in which I was being helped on my journey, and his genial chat which was lightening that journey; which lay through a part of Carnarvonshire usually traversed only by wool merchants and cattle dealers--a country of upland farms swept by the sea breezes, where English is not spoken even now by one person in a hundred, and even at inns and post-offices you get only "_Dim Sassenach_," for your answer. "Do you not say," he went on, "body-birds in English? Oh, but to be sure, it is in the Bible!" with a sudden recovery of his self-esteem.