Then this morning Maitre
Leroux came to me and said, 'Good fellow, it is greatly to your skill and
valour that I owe my life, and that of my wife; this will help you to set
up housekeeping; when you return home,' and he gave me a purse with a
hundred crowns in it; what think you of that, master? The other three also
got purses of fifty crowns each. If that is the rate of pay in Paris for a
couple of hours' fighting, I do not care how often I take a share in a
fray."
"You are doing well indeed, Tom, but you must remember that sooner or
later you might go into a fray and lose your life, and with it the chance
of buying that estate you speak of."
"We must all take our chances, master, and there is no winning a battle
without the risk of the breaking of casques. Are we going to the house we
went to the first night we came here, Master Guy? Methinks that this is
the street we stopped at."
"Yes, Tom. It was the man who lives here who sent me word that the
butchers were going to attack the provost's house, by the same messenger
who met us before Notre Dame, and who last night, after warning me,
carried my message to Count Charles, praying him to come to our aid."
"Then he did us yeoman service," the archer said warmly, "though I think
not that they would have carried the barricade had they fought till
morning."
"Perhaps not, though I would not say so for certain, for they might have
devised some plan such as they did for covering themselves while they
assaulted the door.
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