arrival with him, and her death. He had still
difficulty in believing that it was all true, that Giles and Bertha,
whom he had so long regarded as father and mother, were only his kind
guardians, and that he was the scion of two noble families. Very warmly
and gratefully he thanked his three friends for the kindness which they
had shown to him, and vowed that no change of condition should ever
alter his feelings of affection towards them. It was not until the late
hour of nine o'clock that he said goodbye to his foster parents, for he
was next day to repair to the lodging of Sir Walter Manny, who was to
sail again before the week was out for the Low Countries, from which he
had only returned for a few days to have private converse with the king
on the state of matters there. His friends would have delivered to him
his mother's ring and other tokens which she had left, but thought it
better to keep these, with the other proofs of his birth, until his
claim was established to the satisfaction of the lord justiciaries.

The next morning early, when Walter descended the stairs, he found Ralph
Smith waiting for him. His face was strapped up with plaster and he wore
his arm in a sling, for his armour had been twice cut through as he led
his party in through the sally-port.

"How goes it with you, Ralph?" Walter said. "Not much the worse, I hope,
for your hard knocks?"

"Not a whit," Ralph replied cheerfully, "and I shall be all right again
before the week is out; but the leech made as much fuss over me as if I
had been a girl, just as though one was not accustomed to hard knocks in
a smithy. Those I got yesterday were not half so hard as that which you
gave me the day before. My head rings yet with the thought of it. But I
have not come to talk about myself. Is the story true which they tell of
you, Master Walter, that you are not the son of Giles the bowyer, but of
a great noble?"

"Not of a great noble, Ralph, but of a gallant knight, which is just
as good. My father was killed when I was three years old, and my mother
brought me to Bertha, the wife of Giles the bowyer, who had been her
nurse in childhood. I had forgotten all that had passed, and deemed
myself the son of the good citizen, but since I have heard the truth my
memory has awakened somewhat, and I have a dim recollection of a lordly
castle and of my father and mother."

"And they say, Walter, that you are going with Sir Walter Manny, with
the force which i