Looking at du Champsavoys, he said: "I've just met the connetable.

He regrets the riot, chevalier, and says the Royal Court extends its mercy to you." "I prefer to accept no favours," answered the chevalier.

"As a point of honour, I had thought that, after breakfast, I should return to prison, and--" "The connetable said it was cheaper to let the chevalier go free than to feed him in the Vier Prison," dryly explained Ranulph, helping himself to roasted conger eel and eyeing hungrily the freshly-made black butter Guida was taking from a wooden trencher.

"The Royal Court is stingy," he added.

"'It's nearer than Jean Noe, who got married in his red queminzolle,' as we say on Jersey--" But he got no further at the moment, for shots rang out suddenly before the house.