"Dick, whatever is the matter?" she smiled. "The story is there in that
book. Do you care to read it? No? Shall I tell it to you? Well, then: It
happened in the third crusade. There was a monk whom men called the
Black Priest. He turned apostate, and sold himself to the enemies of
Christ. A Sieur de Trevec burst into the Saracen camp, at the head of
only one hundred lances, and carried the Black Priest away out of the
very midst of their army."
"So that is how you come by the crest," I said quietly; but I thought of
the branded skull in the gravel pit, and wondered.
"Yes," said Lys. "The Sieur de Trevec cut the Black Priest's head off,
but first he branded him with an arrow mark on the forehead. The book
says it was a pious action, and the Sieur de Trevec got great merit by
it. But I think it was cruel, the branding," she sighed.
"Did you ever hear of any other Black Priest?"
"Yes. There was one in the last century, here in St. Gildas. He cast a
white shadow in the sun. He wrote in the Breton language. Chronicles,
too, I believe. I never saw them. His name was the same as that of the
old chronicler, and of the other priest, Jacques Sorgue. Some said he
was a lineal descendant of the traitor. Of course the first Black Priest
was bad enough for anything. But if he did have a child, it need not
have been the ancestor of the last Jacques Sorgue. They say he was so
good he was not allowed to die, but was caught up to heaven one day,"
added Lys, with believing eyes.