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So the Bishop gathered up his courage. His hand was still on the cross on the donkey’s back.

“You are young, my son, and have been grievously disappointed. I, who am old, have seen many things, and this I have learned. Two things there are that, next to the love of God, must be greatest in a man’s life–not war nor slothful peace, nor pride, nor yet a will that would bend all things to its end.”

The overlord scowled. He had found the girl Joan in the Market Square, and his eyes were on her.

“One,” said the Bishop, “is the love of a woman. The other is–a child.”

The donkey stood meekly, with hanging head.

“A woman,” repeated the Bishop. “You grow rough up here on your hillside. Only a few months since the lady your wife went away, and already order has forsaken you. The child, your daughter, runs like a wild thing, without control. Our Holy Church deplores these things.”

“Will Holy Church grant me another wife?”

“Holy Church,” replied the Bishop gravely, “would have you take back, my lord, the wife whom your hardness drove away.”

The seigneur’s gaze turned to the east, where lay the Castle of Philip, his cousin. Then he dropped brooding eyes to the Square below, where the girl Joan assisted her father by the fire, and moved like a mother of kings.

“You wish a woman for the castle, father,” he said. “Then a woman we shall have. Holy Church may not give me another wife, but I shall take one. And I shall have a son.”

* * * * *

The child Clotilde had watched it all from a window. Because she was very high the thing she saw most plainly was the cross on the donkey’s back. Far out over the plain was a moving figure which might or might not have been the Jew. She chose to think it was.

“One of Your people,” she said toward the crucifix. “I have done the good deed.”

She was a little frightened, for all her high head.

Other Christmases she and the lady her mother had sat hand in hand, and listened to the roystering.

“They are drunk,” Clotilde would say.

But her mother would stroke her hand and reply:

“They but rejoice that our Lord is born.”

So the child Clotilde stood at her window and gazed to where the plain stretched as far as she could see and as far again. And there was her mother. She would go to her and bring her back, or perhaps failing that, she might be allowed to stay.

Here no one would miss her. The odour of cooking food filled the great house, loud laughter, the clatter of mug on board. Her old nurse was below, decorating a boar’s head with berries and a crown.

Because it was the Truce of God and a festival, the gates stood open. She reached the foot of the hill safely. Stragglers going up and down the steep way regarded her without suspicion. So she went through the Square past the roasting steer, and by a twisting street into the open country.

When she stopped to rest it was to look back with wistful eyes toward the frowning castle on the cliff. For a divided allegiance was hers. Passionately as she loved her mother, her indomitable spirit was her father’s heritage, his fierceness was her courage, and she loved him as the small may love the great.

The Fool found her at the edge of the river. She had forgotten that there was a river. He was on his great horse, and he rode up by the child and looked down at her.

“It was I who captured him,” he boasted. “The others ran, but I caught him, so.” He dismounted to illustrate.

“It is not because you were brave that you captured him.”