Fare you well." As he followed Clerk Henriet, Laurence looked at the round pellet in his hand.

It was white, soft like ripe fruit, of an elastic consistency, and of the largeness of a pea.
As Laurence ascended the stairs, he heard the practice of the choir beginning in the chapel.

Precentor Renouf, the father of Blaise, had summoned the youths from the cloisters with a long mellow whistle upon his Italian pitch-pipe, running up and down the scale and ending with a flourished "A-a-men." The open windows and the pierced stone railing of the great staircase of Machecoul brought up the sound of that sweet singing from the chapel to the ear of the adventurous Scot as through a funnel.

They were beginning the practice for the Christmas services, though the time was not yet near.
"_Unto God be the glory In the Highest; Peace be on the earth, On the earth, Unto men who have good-will._" So they chanted in their white robes in the Chapel of the Holy Innocents in the Castle of Machecoul near by the Atlantic shore.
The chamber of Gilles de Retz testified to the extraordinary advancement of that great man in knowledge which has been claimed as peculiar to much later centuries.

The window casements were so arranged that in a moment the place could either be made as dark as midnight or flooded with bright light.