“Strong as a horse’s hock, shaggy as a stag’s brisket, Is the knee of the young torrent-leaper, the pride of the house of Crinan. It bent not to Macbeth the accursed, it bends not even to Malcolm the Anointed, But it bends like a harebell--who shall blame it?-- before the breath of beauty.”
Which magnificent effusion being interpreted by Hereward for the instruction of the ladies, procured for the red-headed bard more than one handsome gift.
“The fair lady, my Lord Count, and knights all, will need no champion as far as I am concerned. When one sees so fair a pair together, what can a knight say, in the name of all knighthood, but that the heavens have made them for each other, and that it were sin and shame to sunder them?”
The voice was that of Gilbert of Ghent, who, making a virtue of necessity, walked up to the pair, his weather-beaten countenance wreathed into what were meant for paternal smiles.
“Why did you not say as much in Scotland, and save me all this trouble?” pertinently asked the plain-spoken Scot.
“My lord prince, you owe me a debt for my caution. Without it, the poor lady had never known the whole fervency of your love; or these noble knights and yourself the whole evenness of Count Baldwin’s justice.”
Alftruda turned her head away half contemptuously; and as she did so, she let her hand drop listlessly from Dolfin’s grasp, and drew back to the other ladies.
A suspicion crossed Hereward’s mind. Did she really love the Prince? Did those strange words of hers mean that she had not yet forgotten Hereward himself?
However, he said to himself that it was no concern of his, as it certainly was not: went home to Torfrida, told her everything that had happened, laughed over it with her, and then forgot Alftruda, Dolfin, and Gilbert, in the prospect of a great campaign in Holland.
HOW HEREWARD TOOK THE NEWS FROM STANFORD BRIGG AND HASTINGS.
News of all the fowl of heaven flocking to the feast of the great God, that they might eat the flesh of kings, and captains, and mighty men, and horses, and them that sit on them, and the flesh of all men, both bond and free.
News from Rome, how England, when conquered, was to be held as a fief of St. Peter, and spiritually, as well as temporarily, enslaved. News how the Gonfanon of St. Peter, and a ring with a bit of St. Peter himself enclosed therein, had come to Rouen, to go before the Norman host, as the Ark went before that of Israel.