"What news to-day, brother, of 'Le Grand Sarrasin'?" I spake half in
jest indeed, for long ere this, this very brother had made great sport
of pirates and their dark deeds, and especially, ere this name I spake
had risen to such a sound of evil omen, had he delighted to tease the
children of the cloister therewith. As on some dangerous path he would
whisper, "Go not that way for fear of Le Grand Sarrasin!" or out in the
fishing-smack, he would point to some cosy, full-bottomed trading ship
with a "Hist, lads, the great Geoffroy there astern!" But now Brother
Hugo liked not the jest, but looked sternly at me from beneath his great
brows.

"Le Grand Sarrasin!" said he, "if so thou lovest to call the vilest
foam of filth on these Norman seas, this day last week rode into St.
Brieuc by night with eighteen ships, climbed into the fort, none letting
him, slit the throat of a sentinel and warder, barred the garrison into
its own quarters, and poured like a midnight pestilence through the
streets, bidding his Paynim hounds of slaughter, without pity and
without fear, enter where they listed, and that they did. And there by
night in St. Brieuc, good men and good wives, who never harmed man or
beast were knifed as they lay, the young maids led captive, and the
babes flung like useless baggage through windows into the gutter, and
that is the last I have heard of Le Grand Sarrasin!" said Brother Hugo,
sadly enough.

I stood beside him silently, and the salt tears burst painfully under my
eyelids as I heard the fate of that poor town by the Breton coast.

"Ay, weep, lad, weep!" he said. "And God give strength to our arms to
show him better than tears, if he come our way, this fiend that fears