'I like Hubert better for standing up
for his friend."

"They are queer friends, as unlike as light and darkness," said
Drogo.

"Talking of darkness reminds one of your eyes, they are--"

"Hold your tongue."

And a new quarrel commenced, which we will not stop to behold, but
follow the two into the woods; "older, deeper, grayer," with oaks
that the Druids might have worshipped beneath.

Chapter 4: In the Greenwood.

While they were in sight of the other boys Martin's pride kept him
from displaying any emotion, but when they were alone in the
recesses of the woods, and Hubert, putting his hand on the other's
shoulder bade him "not mind them," his bosom commenced to heave,
and he had great difficulty in repressing his tears. It was not
mere grief, it was the sense of desolation; he felt that he was not
in his own sphere, and but for the thought of the chaplain would
willingly have returned to the outlaws in the greenwood. No boy at
a strange school feels as out of place as he, and the worst was, he
did not get acclimatised in the least.

He had not found his vocation. Then again, he had been sweetly
lectured upon his temper by Father Edmund, and had promised to
control it. Still, was he to be switched by Drogo? He knew he never
could bear it, and didn't quite feel that he ought to do so.

"Hubert," he said at last, "I don't think I can stay here."

"Why, it is a very pleasant place. I love it more every day, and
they are not such bad fellows."

"You are like them in your tastes, and I am not."

"But tell me, Martin, how were you brought up; were you always with
the outlaws? You almost let out the secret today."

"Yes, I was born in the woods."

"Then you are not of gentle blood?"

"That depends upon what you mean by gentle blood. I am not of
Norman blood by my father's side, although my mother may be, from
whom I get my dark features: my father was descended from the old
English lords of Michelham, who lived on the island for ages before
the Conquest; my mother's family is unknown to me."

"Indeed! what became of your English forbears?"

"Robert de Mortain contrived their ruin, but dearly did his race
pay for it in the justice of God. His ghost, or that of his son,
still haunts Pevensey: but all that is past and gone. Earl Simon
sometimes says (you heard him perhaps the other day) that the
English are of as good blood as the Normans, and that he should be
proud to call himself an Englishman.