He talked too of his great chateau at Lauta, by the head waters of
the pleasant Garonne; of the hundred horses in the stables, the
seventy hounds in the kennels, the fifty hawks in the mews. His
English friend should come there when the wars were over, and what
golden days would be theirs! Nigel too, with his English coldness
thawing before this young sunbeam of the South, found himself
talking of the heather slopes of Surrey, of the forest of Woolmer,
even of the sacred chambers of Cosford.
But as they rode onward towards the sinking sun, their thoughts
far away in their distant homes, their horses striding together,
there came that which brought their minds back in an instant to
the perilous hillsides of Brittany.
It was the long blast of a trumpet blown from somewhere on the
farther side of a ridge toward which they were riding. A second
long-drawn note from a distance answered it.
"It is your camp," said the Frenchman.
"Nay," said Nigel; "we have pipes with us and a naker or two, but
I have heard no trumpet-call from our ranks. It behooves us to
take heed, for we know not what may be before us. Ride this way,
I pray you, that we may look over and yet be ourselves unseen."
Some scattered boulders crowned the height, and from behind them
the two young Squires could see the long rocky valley beyond.
Upon a knoll was a small square building with a battlement round
it.
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