This is a new device! Oh to see their faces when we cry 'St.Andrew,' and set on!" "I am not so old as you all in the wars," I began.
"No, Mademoiselle la Lavandiere, but you are of the right spirit, with your wench's face." "But," I said, "how if the English that are to attack the windmill in the first grey of the morning come not to hand-strokes, or take to their heels when they find us awake, and win back to Paris before us?
Our craft, methinks, is to hold them in an ambush, but what if we catch them not?
Let but one runaway be swift of foot, and we are undone." "There is this to be said," quoth Father Urquhart, "that the English company is to sally forth by the Port St.Denis, and it is the Port St.
Denis that our Armagnacs will be guarding.

Now I speak as a man of peace, for that is my calling.

But how would it be if your hundred men and Norman set forth in the dark, and lay hid not very far from the St.
Denis Gate?
Then some while after the lighting of the bale-fires from the windmill, to be lit when the English set on, make straight for the gate, and cry, 'St.George for England!' If you see not the bale-fires ere daylight, you will come back with what speed you may; but if you do see them, then--" "Father, you have not lived long on the Highland line for nothing," quoth Robin Lindsay.
"A very proper stratagem indeed," I said, "but now, gentlemen, there is one little matter; how will Sir Hugh Kennedy take this device of ours?
If we try it and fail, without his privity, we had better never return, but die under Paris wall.

And, even if we hold the gate, and Paris town is taken, faith I would rather affront the fire of John the Lorrainer than the face of Sir Hugh." No man spoke, there were not two minds on this matter, so, after some chaffer of words, it was agreed to send Father Urquhart with Randal to show the whole scheme to Sir Hugh, while the rest of us should await their coming back with an answer.

In no long time they were with us, the father very red and shamefaced.
"He gave the good father the rough side of his tongue," quoth Randal, "for speaking first to me, and not to him.