In the Days of Chivalry | Page 4

oft. I
verily believe that Basildene is our lost inheritance."
"Basildene!" said Gaston quickly, with a start as of recollection
suddenly stirred to life; "sure I remember the name right well now that
thy words bring it back to mind. Yet it is years since I have heard it
spoke. Raymond, knowest thou where is this Basildene?"
"In England, I well believe," was the answer of the other brother.
"Methinks it was the name of our mother's home. I seem to remember
how she told us of it -- the old house over the sea, where she had lived.
Perchance it was once her own in very sooth, and some turbulent baron
or jealous kinsman drove her forth from it, even as we of the house of
De Brocas have been ousted from the Castle of Saut. Brother, if that be
so, Basildene is more our inheritance than yon gloomy fortress can be.

We are our mother's only children, and when she joined our hands
together she called us the twins of Basildene. I trow that we have an
inheritance of our very own, Gaston, away over the blue water yonder."
Gaston's eyes flashed with sudden ardour and purpose.
Often of late had the twins talked together of the future that lay before
them, of the doughty deeds they would accomplish; yet so far nothing
of definite purpose had entered into their minds. Gaston's dreams had
been all of the ancient fortress of Saut, now for long years passed into
the hands of the hostile family, the terrible and redoubtable Sieur de
Navailles, who was feared throughout the length and breadth of the
country round about his house. Raymond had been dimly conscious of
other thoughts and purposes, but memory was only gradually recalling
to his mind the half-forgotten days of childhood, when the twin eaglets
had stood at their mother's knee to talk with her in her own tongue of
the land across the water where was her home -- the land to which their
father had lately passed, upon some mission the children were too
young to understand.
Now the faint dim memories had returned clear and strong. The long
silence was broken. Eagerly the boys strove to recall the past, and bit
by bit things pieced themselves together in their minds till they could
not but marvel how they had so long forgotten. Yet it is often so in
youth. Days pass by one after the other unnoticed and unmarked. Then
all in a moment some new train of thought or purpose is awakened, a
new element enters life, making it from that day something different;
and by a single bound the child becomes a youth -- the youth a man.
Some such change as this was passing over the twin brothers at this
time. A deep-seated dissatisfaction with their present surroundings had
long been growing up in their hearts. They were happy in a fashion in
the humble home at the mill, with good Jean the miller, and Margot his
wife who had been their nurse and a second mother to them all their
lives; but they knew that a great gulf divided them from the Gascon
peasants amongst whom they lived -- a gulf recognized by all those
with whom they came in contact, and in nowise bridged by the fact that
the brothers shared in a measure the simple peasant life, and had known

no other.
Their very name of De Brocas spoke of the race of nobles who had
long held almost sovereign rights over a large tract of country watered
by the Adour and its many tributary streams; and although at this time,
the year of grace 1342, the name of De Brocas was no more heard, but
that of the proud Sieur de Navailles who now reigned there instead, the
old name was loved and revered amongst the people, and the boys were
bred up in all the traditions of their race, till the eagle nature at last
asserted itself, and they felt that life could no longer go on in its old
accustomed groove. Had they not been taught from infancy that a great
future lay before them? and what could that future be but the winning
back of their old ancestral lands and rights?
Perhaps they would have spoken more of this deeply-seated hope had it
not been so very chimerical -- so apparently impossible of present
fulfilment. To wrest from the proud and haughty Sieur de Navailles the
vast territory and strong castle that had been held by him in open
defiance of many mandates from a powerful King, was a task that even
the sanguine and ambitious boys knew to be a hundred times too hard
for them. If they had dreamed of it in their hearts, they had