distraught by some loss or injury which
may have befallen him at our hands during the war and worked him up to a
blind passion of hatred against all Englishmen?"

"I think not that, your Royal Highness," Walter replied. "His manner
was cool and deliberate, and altogether free from any signs of madness.
Moreover, it would seem that he had specially marked me down beforehand,
since, as I have told you, he had bargained with the Count of Evreux for
the possession of my person should I escape with life at the capture of
the castle. It seems rather as if he must have had some private enmity
against me, although what the cause may be I cannot imagine, seeing that
I have never, to my knowledge, before met him, and have only heard his
name by common report.

"Whatever be the cause," the prince said, "we will have satisfaction for
it, and I will beg the king, my father, to write at once to Phillip
of Valois protesting against the treatment that you have received, and
denouncing Sir Phillip of Holbeaut as a base and dishonoured knight,
whom, should he fall into our hands, we will commit at once to the
hangman."

Upon the following day Walter was called before the king, and related to
him in full the incidents of the siege and of his captivity and escape;
and the same day King Edward sent off a letter to Phillip of Valois
denouncing Sir Phillip Holbeaut as a dishonoured knight, and threatening
retaliation upon the French prisoners in his hands.

A fortnight later an answer was received from the King of France saying
that he had inquired into the matter, and had sent a seneschal, who
had questioned Sir Phillip Holbeaut and some of the men-at-arms in the
castle, and that he found that King Edward had been grossly imposed upon
by a fictitious tale. Sir Walter Somers had, he found, been treated with
all knightly courtesy, and believing him to be an honourable knight and
true to his word, but slight watch had been kept over him. He had basely
taken advantage of this trust, and with the man-at-arms with him had
escaped from the castle in order to avoid payment of his ransom, and had
now invented these gross and wicked charges against Sir Phillip Holbeaut
as a cloak to his own dishonour.

Walter was furious when he heard the contents of this letter, and the
king and Black Prince were no less indignant. Although they doubted him
not for a moment, Walter begged that Ralph might be brought before them
and examined strictly as to what h