"We don't think much about horses, my father and I, when we are afraid that we have lost boys. It is easy enough to get another Jennet, and, before many years, this one would have been too small for me. Do you think he is in a comfortable place?"
"I don't know," answered Louis. "I did not see where they took him."
"At any rate," said the girl, promptly, "the thieves can not ride him in the forest, and so he will not be worn out by hard work. But we won't talk about him any more. And your brother's new falcon is gone, too, I suppose."
"Oh, yes," said Louis, ruefully. "But he will not grieve about that, for he did not know he was going to have one. I thought of that a good many times, when I was among the robbers. If he had been expecting it, things would have been a great deal worse than they are now."
"Of course he did not expect the bird," said the girl, "but he knows you have lost it, for everybody was told that it was to carry him a new falcon that you left the castle. But he never will scold you for not bringing it, and so we need not say anything more about it. But he must wonder that you were bringing him a falcon; for how could you know he had none, when you left your mother's house before anything was said about his bird having been lost? He must suspect you had something to do with it."
"Of course he does," said poor Louis. "I intended to tell him all about it when I should give him the new falcon; but it will be harder to do it now."
"Don't you say a word about it," said Agnes, who was really a kind-hearted girl, although she liked to talk about everything that was on her mind. "I'll tell him myself. It will be easy enough for me to do it, and I can tell him better than you can, anyway."
She did tell Raymond all about it, dwelling with much earnestness on Louis's sorrow for his fault, and his great desire to make amends for it; but she found that Raymond cared very little about falcons. His mind was occupied with weightier matters.
[Illustration: THE COUNTESS SENT FOR JASTO AND THANKED HIM WARMLY.]
"Louis is a good fellow and a true one," he said, "although he often plays wild pranks, and the only reason I am sorry that he lost my bird is that it caused him such danger, and all of us such grief."