"But the kind of saint that the Church will ban before it blesses." To the old dame of Beaumanoir the child was the apple of her eye; and her affection drew from him a tenderness denied to others.

But it brought no confidences.

The dreaming boy made his own world, which was not, like his grandmother's, one of a dark road visited rarely by angels, with heaven as a shining city at the end of it; or, like his brother's, a green place of earthy jollity.

It was as if the Breton blood of the Lavals and Rohans had brought to the solid stock of Beaumanoir the fairy whimsies of their dim ancestors.

While the moors and woodlands were to Aimery only places to fly a hawk or follow a stag, to Philip they were a wizard land where dreams grew.