Jehan, "and by the only logic that such
carrion understands. I am by your side, brother. There is but the one
cause for all us countrymen."

But that afternoon as he walked abroad in his cornlands he saw a
portent. A heron rose out of the shallows, and a harrier-hawk swooped to
the pounce, but the long bird flopped securely into the western sky, and
the hawk dropped at his feet, dead but with no mark of a wound.

"Here be marvels," said Jehan, and with that there came on him the
foreknowledge of fate, which in the brave heart wakes awe, but no fear.
He stood silent for a time and gazed over his homelands. The bere was
shaking white and gold in the light evening wind; in the new orchard he
had planted the apples were reddening; from the edge of the forest land
rose wreaths of smoke where the thralls were busy with wood-clearing.
There was little sound in the air, but from the steading came the happy
laughter of a child. Jehan stood very still, and his wistful eyes drank
the peace of it.

"Non nobis, Domine," he said, for a priest had once had the training of
him. "But I leave that which shall not die."

He summoned his wife and told her of the coming of the Crane. From a
finger of his left hand he took the thick ring of gold which Ivo had
marked years before in the Wealden hut.

"I have a notion that I am going a long journey," he told her. "If I do
not return, the Lord Ivo will confirm the little lad in these lands of
ours. But to you and for his sake I make my own bequest. Wear this
ring for him till he is a man, and then bid him wear it as his
father's guerdon. I had it from my father, who had it from his, and
my grandfather told me the tale of it. In his grandsire's day it was a
mighty armlet, but in the famine years it was melted and part sold, and
only this remains. Some one of us far back was a king, and this is the
badge of a king's house. There comes a day, little one, when the fruit
of our bodies shall possess a throne. See that the lad be royal in
thought and deed, as he is royal in blood."

Next morning he kissed his wife and fondled his little son, and with his
men rode northward, his eyes wistful but his mouth smiling.

What followed was for generations a tale among humble folk in England,
who knew nothing of the deeds of the King's armies. By cottage fires
they wove stories about it and made simple songs, the echo of which may
still be traced by curious scholars. There is something of it in the
gre