"Having dined and wined so well, shall we go on, Jacqueline?"
To which she at once assented by rising, and soon they had left the principality of the lily far in the distance. Now the road so narrowed he fell behind. The character of the country had changed; some time ago they had passed out of the wild forest, and had begun to traverse a great, level plain, broken with stubble. As far as the eye could reach, no other human figures were visible; the land outstretched, apparently without end; no habitations dotted the landscape, and, the sole signs of life, wheeling birds of prey, languidly floated in the air. At length she glanced around. Was it to reassure herself the jester rode near; that she had not, unattended, entered that forbidding territory? Then she paused abruptly and the fool approached.
"By this time the turnkey should be relieved," she said.
"But not released," he answered, holding up the keys which he yet wore at his girdle. "They will have to come a long distance to find them," he continued, and threw the keys far away upon the sward.
"They may not think of following on this road at all," she returned. "It is the old castle thoroughfare, long since disused."
"How came you to know it?" he asked, quickly.
"How--because I lived in the castle before the king built the palace and the new thoroughfare," she answered slowly.
"You lived in the castle, then, when it was the residence of the proud Constable of Dubrois? You must have been but a child," he added, reflectively.
"Yes; but children may have long memories."
"In your case, certainly. How well you knew all the passages and corridors of the castle!"
She responded carelessly and changed the conversation. The thoroughfare broadening, for the remainder of the day they pressed forward side by side. But a single human figure, during all those hours, they encountered, and that when the afternoon had fairly worn away. For some time they had pursued their journey silently, when at a turn in the road the horse of the jester shied and started back.
At the same time an unclean, offensive-looking monk in Franciscan attire arose suddenly out of the stubble by the wayside. In his hand he held a heavy staff, newly cut from the forest, a stock which in his brawny arms seemed better adapted for a weapon than as a prop for his sturdy frame. From the rope girdle about his waist depended a rosary whose great beads would have served the fingers of a Cyclops, and a most diminutive, leathern-bound prayer-book. At the appearance of the fool and his companion, he opened an enormous mouth, and in a voice proportionately large began to whine right vigorously: