his bow jutting from over his shoulder,
and the sun gleaming brightly upon his head-piece and the links of
his chain-mail. Beside him stood his giant recruit, still clad in the
home-spun and ill-fitting garments of the fuller of Lymington, with arms
and legs shooting out of his scanty garb. Even as Alleyne watched them
they turned upon their heels and plodded off together upon their way.

CHAPTER IX. HOW STRANGE THINGS BEFELL IN MINSTEAD WOOD.

The path which the young clerk had now to follow lay through a
magnificent forest of the very heaviest timber, where the giant bowls
of oak and of beech formed long aisles in every direction, shooting
up their huge branches to build the majestic arches of Nature's own
cathedral. Beneath lay a broad carpet of the softest and greenest moss,
flecked over with fallen leaves, but yielding pleasantly to the foot of
the traveller. The track which guided him was one so seldom used that in
places it lost itself entirely among the grass, to reappear as a reddish
rut between the distant tree trunks. It was very still here in the heart
of the woodlands. The gentle rustle of the branches and the distant
cooing of pigeons were the only sounds which broke in upon the silence,
save that once Alleyne heard afar off a merry call upon a hunting bugle
and the shrill yapping of the hounds.

It was not without some emotion that he looked upon the scene around
him, for, in spite of his secluded life, he knew enough of the ancient
greatness of his own family to be aware that the time had been when they
had held undisputed and paramount sway over all that tract of country.
His father could trace his pure Saxon lineage back to that Godfrey Malf
who had held the manors of Bisterne and of Minstead at the time when the
Norman first set mailed foot upon English soil. The afforestation of the
district, however, and its conversion into a royal demesne had
clipped off a large section of his estate, while other parts had been
confiscated as a punishment for his supposed complicity in an abortive
Saxon rising. The fate of the ancestor had been typical of that of his
descendants. During three hundred years their domains had gradually
contracted, sometimes through royal or feudal encroachment, and
sometimes through such gifts to the Church as that with which Alleyne's
father had opened the doors of Beaulieu Abbey to his younger son. The
importance of the family had thus dwindled, but they still retained the