ly War with Duke Robert.'

'Ho! ho! a modest request for a beggarly English clown!' cried the
King, aiming a blow at the lad with his whip, and pushing on his
horse, so as almost to throw him back on the heath. 'Ho! ho! fit
him out for a fool's errand!'

'We'll fit him! We'll teach him to take the cross at other men's
expense!' shouted the followers, seizing on the boy.

'Nay; we'll bestow his cross on him for a free gift!' exclaimed
Roger de Maisonforte.

And Bertram, struggling desperately in vain among the band of
ruffians, found his left arm bared, and two long and painful
slashes, in the form of the Crusader's cross, inflicted, amid loud
laughter, as the blood sprang forth.

'There, Sir Crusader,' said Roger, grinding his teeth over him. 'Go
on thy way now--as a horse-boy, if so please thee, and know better
than to throw thy mean false English pretension in the face of a
gentle Norman.'

Men, horses, dogs, all seemed to trample and scoff at Bertram as he
fell back on the elastic stems of the heath and gorse, whose
prickles seemed to renew the insults by scratching his face. When
the King's horn, the calls, the brutal laughter, and the baying of
the dogs had begun to die away in the distance, he gathered himself
together, sat up, and tried to find some means of stanching the
blood. Not only was the wound in a place hard to reach, but it had
been ploughed with the point of a boar-spear, and was grievously
torn. He could do nothing with it, and, as he perceived, he had
further been robbed of his sword, his last possession, his father's
sword.

The large tears of mingled rage, grief, and pain might well spring
from the poor boy's eyes in his utter loneliness, as he clenched his
hand with powerless wrath, and regained his feet, to retrace, as
best he might, his way to where his widowed mother had found a
temporary shelter in a small religious house.

The sun grew hotter and hotter, Bertram's wound bled, though not
profusely, the smart grew upon him, his tongue was parched with
thirst, and though he kept resolutely on, his breath came panting,
his head grew dizzy, his eyes dim, his feet faltered, and at last,
just as he attained a wider and more trodden way, he dropped
insensible by the side of the path, his dry lips trying to utter the
cry, "Lord, have mercy on me!"

II. DE JURE

When Bertram de Maisonforte opened his eyes again cold waters were
on his face, wine was moistening his lips, the bu