"But what said the seneschal to your letter?" asked Louis.
"Oh, nought at all," answered Jasto. "I read it to him out of my head, and showed him his master's mark."
"But did you not feel, all the time, that you were a great trickster and cheat?" said the free-spoken Louis.
"No more than I do now," answered Jasto, "coming here to help you with your letter to your mother, and telling you a story with a moral to it, showing how arduous a thing it is to write a letter, so that you may be ready for your difficulties when they come upon you. And now this pen is done, and it ought to be, for I have put a score of nibs to it, and there is not enough quill left for another one. It may be blunt, but it will make a mark."
"And what am I to write on?" asked Louis.
"I'll find that and the ink this afternoon," said Jasto, "but now I smell dinner."
In the afternoon, Jasto mixed up a black compound with some water, so as to make an ink,—rather thick and gritty, to be sure, but good enough for its purpose,—and he produced a piece of parchment, completely written over on one side. This writing he proceeded to obliterate, as far as possible, by rubbing it with a piece of pumice-stone.
Louis was impatient, and suggested that he might mark out the words on one side and go on writing on the other; but Jasto would not hear to this, for it would argue too great poverty on the part of the _cotereaux_ to send a letter on the back of another, and so he rubbed and rubbed, and talked, and came and went, until it was nearly dark, and so the letter was postponed until the next day.
On the morrow, however, Jasto refused to produce the writing materials, because there was to be a grand expedition of the band, which would require nearly all the men; and Michol had said that Louis must be taken along, as he did not wish to leave him behind, guarded only by the few men who would stay at the camp.
"That's a pretty way to do!" exclaimed Louis. "Suppose I should be killed in this expedition, what will your captain say to my mother then? I am not afraid to go, but I do not want to be taken for a robber, and be shot with an arrow, or have my head cut off."
"Be not afraid," said Jasto, laughing. "The enemy will not hurt you, if you keep out of the way. You are to be under my special keeping, and I will warrant that the foe shall not kill you."