hat
they could not imagine their existence, were lavished upon him.
She could not bear him away from her, and he, with that respect for
authority which the age demanded, would not go without her blessing and
consent.

So it came about that Nigel, with his lion heart and with the blood of
a hundred soldiers thrilling in his veins, still at the age of two and
twenty, wasted the weary days reclaiming his hawks with leash and lure
or training the alans and spaniels who shared with the family the big
earthen-floored hall of the manor-house.

Day by day the aged Lady Ermyntrude had seen him wax in strength and in
manhood, small of stature, it is true, but with muscles of steel--and a
soul of fire. From all parts, from the warden of Guildford Castle, from
the tilt-yard of Farnham, tales of his prowess were brought back to her,
of his daring as a rider, of his debonair courage, of his skill with all
weapons; but still she, who had both husband and son torn from her by
a bloody death, could not bear that this, the last of the Lorings, the
final bud of so famous an old tree, should share the same fate. With a
weary heart, but with a smiling face, he bore with his uneventful days,
while she would ever put off the evil time until the harvest was better,
until the monks of Waverley should give up what they had taken, until
his uncle should die and leave money for his outfit, or any other excuse
with which she could hold him to her side.

And indeed, there was need for a man at Tilford, for the strife betwixt
the Abbey and the manor-house had never been appeased, and still on one
pretext or another the monks would clip off yet one more slice of their
neighbor's land. Over the winding river, across the green meadows, rose
the short square tower and the high gray walls of the grim Abbey, with
its bell tolling by day and night, a voice of menace and of dread to the
little household.

It is in the heart of the great Cistercian monastery that this chronicle
of old days must take its start, as we trace the feud betwixt the monks
and the house of Loring, with those events to which it gave birth,
ending with the coming of Chandos, the strange spear-running of Tilford
Bridge and the deeds with which Nigel won fame in the wars. Elsewhere,
in the chronicle of the White Company, it has been set forth what manner
of man was Nigel Loring. Those who love him may read herein those things
which went to his making. Let us go back together and gaze