They hurled their relics after him, and so rode back
to the blacksmith's the poorer both in pocket and in faith.
CHAPTER XXVII.
HOW ROGER CLUB-FOOT WAS PASSED INTO PARADISE.
It was evening before the three comrades came into Aiguillon,
There they found Sir Nigel Loring and Ford safely lodged at the
sign of the "Baton Rouge," where they supped on good fare and
slept between lavender-scented sheets. It chanced, however, that
a knight of Poitou, Sir Gaston d'Estelle, was staying there on
his way back from Lithuania, where he had served a term with the
Teutonic knights under the land-master of the presbytery of
Marienberg. He and Sir Nigel sat late in high converse as to
bushments, outfalls, and the intaking of cities, with many tales
of warlike men and valiant deeds. Then their talk turned to
minstrelsy, and the stranger knight drew forth a cittern, upon
which he played the minne-lieder of the north, singing the while
in a high cracked voice of Hildebrand and Brunhild and Siegfried,
and all the strength and beauty of the land of Almain.
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