the royal minever, and the lions of England stamped in silver upon
his harness, none could fail to recognize the noble Edward, most warlike
and powerful of all the long line of fighting monarchs who had ruled
the Anglo-Norman race. Alleyne doffed hat and bowed head at the sight
of him, but the serf folded his hands and leaned them upon his cudgel,
looking with little love at the knot of nobles and knights-in-waiting
who rode behind the king.

"Ha!" cried Edward, reining up for an instant his powerful black steed.
"Le cerf est passe? Non? Ici, Brocas; tu parles Anglais."

"The deer, clowns?" said a hard-visaged, swarthy-faced man, who rode at
the king's elbow. "If ye have headed it back it is as much as your ears
are worth."

"It passed by the blighted beech there," said Alleyne, pointing, "and
the hounds were hard at its heels."

"It is well," cried Edward, still speaking in French: for, though he
could understand English, he had never learned to express himself in so
barbarous and unpolished a tongue. "By my faith, sirs," he continued,
half turning in his saddle to address his escort, "unless my woodcraft
is sadly at fault, it is a stag of six tines and the finest that we have
roused this journey. A golden St. Hubert to the man who is the first to
sound the mort." He shook his bridle as he spoke, and thundered away,
his knights lying low upon their horses and galloping as hard as whip
and spur would drive them, in the hope of winning the king's prize. Away
they drove down the long green glade--bay horses, black and gray, riders
clad in every shade of velvet, fur, or silk, with glint of brazen horn
and flash of knife and spear. One only lingered, the black-browed Baron
Brocas, who, making a gambade which brought him within arm-sweep of
the serf, slashed him across the face with his riding-whip. "Doff, dog,
doff," he hissed, "when a monarch deigns to lower his eyes to such as
you!"--then spurred through the underwood and was gone, with a gleam of
steel shoes and flutter of dead leaves.

The villein took the cruel blow without wince or cry, as one to whom
stripes are a birthright and an inheritance. His eyes flashed, however,
and he shook his bony hand with a fierce wild gesture after the
retreating figure.

"Black hound of Gascony," he muttered, "evil the day that you and those
like you set foot in free England! I know thy kennel of Rochecourt. The
night will come when I may do to thee and thine what you and your c