to the new lord, with all that grace which he
inherited from his Provencal blood. And sooth, my young readers, if
you could have seen that eager face with that winning smile, and
those brave bright eyes, you would have loved him, too, as the earl
did; but for all that I do not think he had the sterling qualities
of his friend Martin, who is rather my hero: but then I am not
young now, or I might think differently.

We have not space again to describe this portion of Hubert's life,
upon which we now enter, in any detail. Suffice it to say he went
to Hereford Castle with the earl, and was soon transferred to an
outpost on the upper Wye, where he was at once engaged in deadly
warfare with the fiercest of savages. For the Welsh, once the
cultivated Britons, had degenerated into savagery. Bloodshed and
fire raising amongst the hated "Saxons" (as they called all the
English alike) were the amusement and the business of their lives,
until Edward the First, of dire necessity, conquered and tamed them
in the very next generation. Until then, the Welsh borders were a
hundred times more insecure than the Cheviots. No treaties could
bind the mountaineers. They took oaths of allegiance, and
cheerfully broke them. "No faith with Saxons" was their motto.

These fields, these meadows once were ours,
And sooth by heaven and all its powers,
Think you we will not issue forth,
To spoil the spoiler as we may,
And from the robber rend the prey.

Even the payment of blackmail, so effectual with the Highlanders,
did not secure the border counties from these flippant fighters,
and in sooth Normans were much too proud for any such evasion of a
warrior's duty.

There, then, our Hubert fleshed his maiden sword, within a week
after his arrival at Llanystred Castle; and that in a fierce
skirmish, wherein the fighting was all hand to hand, he slew his
man.

But in these fights, where every one was brave, there was small
opportunity for Hubert to gain personal distinction. A coward was
very rare; as well expect a deer to be born amongst a race of
tigers. There were, it is true, degrees of self devotion, and for a
chance of distinguishing himself by self sacrifice Hubert longed.

And thus it came.

He had been sent from the castle on the Wye, which might well be
called, like one in Sir Walter's tales, "Castle Dangerous," upon an
errand to an outpost, and was returning by moonlight along the
banks of the stream, there a rushing mountain torr