sturdy, and she walked with the easy swing of perfect health. He could have kissed her smutty face then just because the world was so fair and he was free.

“You have a magnificent cow, my dear,” he remarked.

“But certainly,” she answered and her white teeth sparkled through her happy laugh, “better a fat cow for a wench than a lean husband. She carries me, does my spotted cow, which no husband would do,” and she scrambled on to the glossy back and laughed again, throwing back her shock of flaxen hair. André observed, heedful by long experience of such trifles, that not even her clumsy sabots could spoil the dainty neatness of her feet.

“And what may your name be?” he demanded.

“Yvonne, Monsieur le Duc; they call me Yvonne of the Spotted Cow, and some,” she dimpled into a chuckle, “Yvonne of the Spotless Ankles. I am not pretty, moi, but that matters not. My fat cow or my ankles will get me a husband some day, and till then, like Monseigneur, I keep a gay heart.”Whereupon she drove her heels into the cow’s flanks and the two slowly
passed out of sight, though the merry tinkling of the bell continued to
jingle through the leafless trees long after she had disappeared. 

André waited patiently. An hour went by, still he waited. Twice he trotted up the road and peered this way and that, but there was not a soul to be seen, and with a muttered exclamation of disgust he was about to spur away when the notes of a hunting horn caused him to gather up the reins sharply. And now eager expectation was written on every line of his face. 

A young lady in a beautiful riding dress of hunting green, and attended by a single lackey on horseback, came galloping down the forest track. At sight of him by the roadside she pulled up her horse in great astonishment. 

“André--you--you are back?” she said, and the colour flooded into her cheeks. 

“Thank God, yes.” 

“And well?” 

“Perfectly. My wounds are healed. I am a prisoner no longer, and in a fortnight I return to the Low Countries to seek revenge from my enemies and yours, Denise, the English.” 

Her grey eyes flashed, then dropped modestly. “You will find revenge, little doubt,” she said, “the Maison du Roi are soldiers worthy of the noblesse and of France. But do you not come to Versailles first?” 

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