THE path which the young clerk had now to follow lay through amagnificent forest of the very heaviest timber, where the giantbowls of oak and of beech formed long aisles in every direction,shooting up their huge branches to build the majestic arches ofNature's own cathedral. Beneath lay a broad carpet of thesoftest and greenest moss, flecked over with fallen leaves, butyielding pleasantly to the foot of the traveller. The trackwhich guided him was one so seldom used that in places it lostitself entirely among the grass, to reappear as a reddish rutbetween the distant tree trunks. It was very still here in theheart of the woodlands. The gentle rustle of the branches andthe distant cooing of pigeons were the only sounds which broke inupon the silence, save that once Alleyne heard afar off a merrycall upon a hunting bugle and the shrill yapping of the hounds.

It was not without some emotion that he looked upon the scenearound him, for, in spite of his secluded life, he knew enough ofthe ancient greatness of his own family to be aware that the timehad been when they had held undisputed and paramount sway overall that tract of country. His father could trace his pure Saxonlineage back to that Godfrey Malf who had held the manors ofBisterne and of Minstead at the time when the Norman first setmailed foot upon English soil. The afforestation of thedistrict, however, and its conversion into a royal demesne hadclipped off a large section of his estate, while other parts hadbeen confiscated as a punishment for his supposed complicity inan abortive Saxon rising. The fate of the ancestor had beentypical of that of his descendants. During three hundred yearstheir domains had gradually contracted, sometimes through royalor feudal encroachment, and sometimes through such gifts to theChurch as that with which Alleyne's father had opened the doorsof Beaulieu Abbey to his younger son. The importance of thefamily had thus dwindled, but they still retained the old Saxonmanor-house, with a couple of farms and a grove large enough toafford pannage to a hundred pigs--"sylva de centum porcis," asthe old family parchments describe it. Above all, the owner ofthe soil could still hold his head high as the veritable Socmanof Minstead--that is, as holding the land in free socage, withno feudal superior, and answerable to no man lower than the king.Knowing this, Alleyne felt some little glow of worldly pride ashe looked for the first time upon the land with which so manygenerations of his ancestors had been associated. He pushed onthe quicker, twirling his staff merrily, and looking out at everyturn of the path for some sign of the old Saxon residence. Hewas suddenly arrested, however, by the appearance of a wild-looking fellow armed with a club, who sprang out from behind atree and barred his passage. He was a rough, powerful peasant,with cap and tunic of untanned sheepskin, leather breeches, andgalligaskins round legs and feet.

"Stand!" he shouted, raising his heavy cudgel to enforce theorder. "Who are you who walk so freely through the wood?Whither would you go, and what is your errand?"

"Why should I answer your questions, my friend?" said Alleyne,standing on his guard.

"Because your tongue may save your pate. But where have I lookedupon your face before?"

"No longer ago than last night at the 'Pied Merlin,' " the clerkanswered, recognizing the escaped serf who had been so outspokenas to his wrongs.

"By the Virgin! yes. You were the little clerk who sat so mum inthe corner, and then cried fy on the gleeman. What hast in thescrip?"

"Naught of any price."

"How can I tell that, clerk? Let me see."

"Not I."

"Fool! I could pull you limb from limb like a pullet. Whatwould you have? Hast forgot that we are alone far from all men?How can your clerkship help you? Wouldst lose scrip and lifetoo?"

"I will part with neither without fight."

"A fight, quotha? A fight betwixt spurred cock and new hatchedchicken! Thy fighting days may soon be over."

"Hadst asked me in the name of charity I would have givenfreely," cried Alleyne. "As it stands, not one farthing shallyou have with my free will, and when I see my brother. theSocman of Minstead, he will raise hue and cry from vill to vill,from hundred to hundred, until you are taken as a common robberand a scourge to the country."

The outlaw sank his club. "The Socman's brother!" he gasped."Now, by the keys of Peter! I had rather that hand withered andtongue was palsied ere I had struck or miscalled you. If you arethe Socman's brother you are one of the right side, I warrant,for all your clerkly dress."

"His brother I am," said Alleyne. "But if I were not, is thatreason why you should molest me on the king's ground?"

"I give not the pip of an apple for king or for noble," cried theserf passionately. "Ill have I had from them, and ill I shallrepay them. I am a good friend to my friends, and, by theVirgin! an evil foeman to my foes."

And therefore the worst of foemen to thyself," said Alleyne."But I pray you, since you seem to know him, to point out to methe shortest path to my brother's house."

The serf was about to reply, when the clear ringing call of abugle burst from the wood close behind them, and Alleyne caughtsight for an instant of the dun side and white breast of a lordlystag glancing swiftly betwixt the distant tree trunks. A minutelater came the shaggy deer-hounds, a dozen or fourteen of them,running on a hot scent, with nose to earth and tail in air. Asthey streamed past the silent forest around broke suddenly intoloud life, with galloping of hoofs, crackling of brushwood, andthe short, sharp cries of the hunters. Close behind the packrode a fourrier and a yeoman-pricker, whooping on the laggardsand encouraging the leaders, in the shrill half-French jargonwhich was the language of venery and woodcraft. Alleyne wasstill gazing after them, listening to the loud "Hyke-a-Bayard!Hyke-a-Pomers! Hyke-a-Lebryt!" with which they called upon theirfavorite hounds, when a group of horsemen crashed out through theunderwood at the very spot where the serf and he were standing.

The one who led was a man between fifty and sixty years of age,war-worn and weather-beaten, with a broad, thoughtful foreheadand eyes which shone brightly from under his fierce and overhungbrows, His beard, streaked thickly with gray, bristled forwardfrom his chin, and spoke of a passionate nature, while the long,finely cut face and firm mouth marked the leader of men. Hisfigure was erect and soldierly, and he rode his horse with thecareless grace of a man whose life had been spent in the saddle.In common garb, his masterful face and flashing eye would havemarked him as one who was born to rule; but now, with his silkentunic powdered with golden fleurs-de-lis, his velvet mantle linedwith the royal minever, and the lions of England stamped insilver upon his harness, none could fail to recognize the nobleEdward, most warlike and powerful of all the long line offighting monarchs who had ruled the Anglo-Norman race. Alleynedoffed hat and bowed head at the sight of him, but the serffolded his hands and leaned them upon his cudgel, looking withlittle love at the knot of nobles and knights-in-waiting who rodebehind the king.

"Ha!" cried Edward, reining up for an instant his powerful blacksteed. "Le cerf est passe? Non? Ici, Brocas; tu parlesAnglais."

"The deer, clowns?" said a hard-visaged, swarthy-faced man, whorode at the king's elbow. "If ye have headed it back it is asmuch as your ears are worth."

"It passed by the blighted beech there," said Alleyne, pointing,"and the hounds were hard at its heels."

"It is well," cried Edward, still speaking in French: for, thoughhe could understand English, he had never learned to expresshimself in so barbarous and unpolished a tongue. "By my faith,sirs," he continued, half turning in his saddle to address hisescort, "unless my woodcraft is sadly at fault, it is a stag ofsix tines and the finest that we have roused this journey. Agolden St. Hubert to the man who is the first to sound the mort."

He shook his bridle as he spoke, and thundered away, his knightslying low upon their horses and galloping as hard as whip andspur would drive them, in the hope of winning the king's prize.Away they drove down the long green glade--bay horses, black andgray, riders clad in every shade of velvet, fur, or silk, withglint of brazen horn and flash of knife and spear. One onlylingered, the black-browed Baron Brocas, who, making a gambadewhich brought him within arm-sweep of the serf, slashed himacross the face with his riding-whip. "Doff, dog, doff," hehissed, "when a monarch deigns to lower his eyes to such asyou!"--then spurred through the underwood and was gone, with agleam of steel shoes and flutter of dead leaves.

The villein took the cruel blow without wince or cry, as one towhom stripes are a birthright and an inheritance. His eyesflashed, however, and he shook his bony hand with a fierce wildgesture after the retreating figure.

"Black hound of Gascony," he muttered, "evil the day that you andthose like you set foot in free England! I know thy kennel ofRochecourt. The night will come when I may do to thee and thinewhat you and your class have wrought upon mine and me. May Godsmite me if I fail to smite thee, thou French robber, with thywife and thy child and all that is under thy castle roof!"

"Forbear!" cried Alleyne. "Mix not God's name with theseunhallowed threats! And yet it was a coward's blow, and one tostir the blood and loose the tongue of the most peaceful. Let mefind some soothing simples and lay them on the weal to draw thesting,"

"Nay, there is but one thing that can draw the sting, and thatthe future may bring to me. But, clerk, if you would see yourbrother you must on, for there is a meeting to-day, and his merrymen will await him ere the shadows turn from west to east. Ipray you not to hold him back, for it would be an evil thing ifall the stout lads were there and the leader a-missing. I wouldcome with you, but sooth to say I am stationed here and may notmove. The path over yonder, betwixt the oak and the thorn,should bring you out into his nether field."

Alleyne lost no time in following the directions of the wild,masterless man, whom he left among the trees where he had foundhim. His heart was the heavier for the encounter, not onlybecause all bitterness and wrath were abhorrent to his gentlenature, but also because it disturbed him to hear his brotherspoken of as though he were a chief of outlaws or the leader of aparty against the state. Indeed, of all the things which he hadseen yet in the world to surprise him there was none more strangethan the hate which class appeared to bear to class. The talk oflaborer, woodman and villein in the inn had all pointed to thewide-spread mutiny, and now his brother's name was spoken asthough he were the very centre of the universal discontent. Ingood truth, the commons throughout the length and breadth of theland were heart-weary of this fine game of chivalry which hadbeen played so long at their expense. So long as knight andbaron were a strength and a guard to the kingdom they might beendured, but now, when all men knew that the great battles inFrance had been won by English yeomen and Welsh stabbers, warlikefame, the only fame to which his class had ever aspired, appearedto have deserted the plate-clad horsemen. The sports of thelists had done much in days gone by to impress the minds of thepeople, but the plumed and unwieldy champion was no longer anobject either of fear or of reverence to men whose fathers andbrothers had shot into the press at Crecy or Poitiers, and seenthe proudest chivalry in the world unable to make head againstthe weapons of disciplined peasants. Power had changed hands.The protector had become the protected, and the whole fabric ofthe feudal system was tottering to a fall. Hence the fiercemutterings of the lower classes and the constant discontent,breaking out into local tumult and outrage, and culminating someyears later in the great rising of Tyler. What Alleyne saw andwondered at in Hampshire would have appealed equally to thetraveller in any other English county from the Channel to themarches of Scotland,