and slow of speech, so that she gets small
profit from his teaching. I would have you do what you can with her, and
with Agatha my young tire-woman, and with Dorothy Pierpont."

And so Alleyne found himself not only chosen as squire to a knight but
also as squire to three damosels, which was even further from the part
which he had thought to play in the world. Yet he could but agree to
do what he might, and so went forth from the castle hall with his
face flushed and his head in a whirl at the thought of the strange and
perilous paths which his feet were destined to tread.

CHAPTER XII. HOW ALLEYNE LEARNED MORE THAN HE COULD TEACH.

And now there came a time of stir and bustle, of furbishing of arms and
clang of hammer from all the southland counties. Fast spread the tidings
from thorpe to thorpe and from castle to castle, that the old game was
afoot once more, and the lions and lilies to be in the field with the
early spring. Great news this for that fierce old country, whose trade
for a generation had been war, her exports archers and her imports
prisoners. For six years her sons had chafed under an unwonted peace.
Now they flew to their arms as to their birthright. The old soldiers of
Crecy, of Nogent, and of Poictiers were glad to think that they might
hear the war-trumpet once more, and gladder still were the hot youth who
had chafed for years under the martial tales of their sires. To pierce
the great mountains of the south, to fight the tamers of the fiery
Moors, to follow the greatest captain of the age, to find sunny
cornfields and vineyards, when the marches of Picardy and Normandy were
as rare and bleak as the Jedburgh forests--here was a golden prospect
for a race of warriors. From sea to sea there was stringing of bows in
the cottage and clang of steel in the castle.

Nor did it take long for every stronghold to pour forth its cavalry, and
every hamlet its footmen. Through the late autumn and the early winter
every road and country lane resounded with nakir and trumpet, with the
neigh of the war-horse and the clatter of marching men. From the Wrekin
in the Welsh marches to the Cotswolds in the west or Butser in the
south, there was no hill-top from which the peasant might not have seen
the bright shimmer of arms, the toss and flutter of plume and of pensil.
From bye-path, from woodland clearing, or from winding moor-side track
these little rivulets of steel united in the larger roads to form a
broa