"Whew!" he panted, holding his dripping weapons on either side of him, so
as not to get any more blood on his clothes. Then a grin of satisfaction
appeared on his perspiring face, and he said:
"Three Guisards less to shout '_Vive la messe_.' It's a pity we haven't
time to exchange horses with these dead whelps of hell. But the others
are coming up, and we ought to rest awhile."
We sheathed our weapons and spurred on our horses, again southward.
Looking back, soon, we saw that the other pursuers, on coming up to their
dead comrades, had chosen first to look after the belongings of the
latter rather than to avenge their deaths. And while Barbemouche and his
men, of whom there were now six, tarried over the dead bodies, we made
such good speed that at last we were out of sight of them.
My first use of my returned breath was to thank my stalwart ally.
He received my gratitude with great modesty, said that the Lord had
guided his arm in the fight, and expressed himself with a humility that
was in complete contrast to the lion-like fury shown by him in the
combat. Judging him, from his phrases, to be a Huguenot, I asked whether
he was one, by birth, as I was.
"By birth, from my mother," he replied. "My father was a Catholic, and in
order to win my mother, he pretended to have joined the reformers. That
deceit was the least of his many rascally deeds. He was one of the chosen
instruments of the devil,--a violent, roystering cut-throat, but a good
soldier, as was shown in Italy and at St.
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