about to thrust
at him; and Ralph's hand darted to his own hilt, but with an angry
gesture, he let it fall, and stood firm.

Then a cry, mingled of rage and shame, escaped from Mark; and he thrust
his sword back into its sheath, and pushing Nick aside, as the man stood
in his way, he hurried down the hill.

"Yah-h-ah!" growled Nick savagely, "you aren't going to let him off like
that, master?"

Mark heard the words, and turned round.

"How dare you speak to me like that!" cried Ralph, glad of some one on
whom to vent the anger he felt.

"Because Sir Morton, if he'd been here, would have had that young Eden
tied neck and heels, and pitched into one of the cells. Because you're
a coward, sir. There!"

"Ah-h-ah!" growled the other men in chorus, as they glared at the lad.

"Then take a coward's blow," cried Ralph; and he struck the man with all
his might across the face, using the back of his hand.

There was another growl from the men, but no one spoke, and Mark Eden
turned again, and strode down the hill, while the men untied and coiled
up the ropes, and slowly followed their young master down the slope, and
then up once more toward the Castle, Nick Garth shaking his head a good
deal, and looking puzzled, and a great deal interested in the blood
which he kept smudging off, first with one hand, and then with the
other, from his face.

"Here," he cried at last, as Ralph disappeared through the gateway,
"what's best to stop this here? I can't go with it all tied up."

"Bucket o' water from the well," said Ram Jennings, grinning. "Say,
Nick, he aren't such a coward, arter all."

"No," growled Nick, after a double wipe; "and, for such a little 'un, he
can hit hard."

CHAPTER NINE.

ANOTHER TURN OF FORTUNE'S WHEEL.

Master Rayburn received the raven's addled egg, and gave Ram Jennings a
groat for his trouble, and for telling him all about how it was
obtained, and what followed, keeping the man, and questioning him a good
deal, as he smiled and frowned over the task he began at once, that of
chipping a good-sized hole in one side of the egg, and extracting its
contents in a little wooden bowl of clean water.

At last, after a great deal of sniffing and shuffling about, the man
said, "Done with me, Master Rayburn?"

"Yes," said the old man sharply. "Unless you can tell me any more. But
why?"

"Well, master, I'm pretty hard about the smell, and it falls to me to
clean out the pigsties; and when t