nths passed smoothly in the house on the knoll above the fat fen
pastures. Jehan forsook his woodcraft for the work of byre and furrow
and sheepfold, and the yield of his lands grew under his wardenship. He
brought heavy French cattle to improve the little native breed, and made
a garden of fruit trees where once had been only bent and sedge. The
thralls wrought cheerfully for him, for he was a kindly master, and
the freemen of the manor had no complaint against one who did impartial
justice and respected their slow and ancient ways. As for skill in
hunting, there was no fellow to the lord of Highstead between Trent and
Thames.

Inside the homestead the Lady Hilda moved happily, a wife smiling and
well content. She had won more than a husband; it seemed she had made
a convert; for daily Jehan grew into the country-side as if he had been
born in it. Something in the soft woodland air and the sharper tang of
the fens and the sea awoke response from his innermost soul. An aching
affection was born in him for every acre of his little heritage. His
son, dark like his father, who made his first diffident pilgrimages in
the sunny close where the pigeons cooed, was not more thirled to English
soil.

They were quiet years in that remote place, for Aelward over at Galland
had made his peace with the King. But when the little Jehan was four
years old the tides of war lapped again to the forest edges. One Hugo of
Auchy, who had had a usurer to his father and had risen in an iron age
by a merciless greed, came a-foraying from the north to see how he might
add to his fortunes. Men called him the Crane, for he was tall and lean
and parchment-skinned, and to his banner resorted all malcontents and
broken men. He sought to conduct a second Conquest, making war on the
English who still held their lands, but sparing the French manors.
The King's justice was slow-footed, and the King was far away, so the
threatened men, banded together to hold their own by their own might.

Aelward brought the news from Galland that the Crane had entered their
borders. The good Ivo was overseas, busy on the Brittany marches, and
there was no ruler in Fenland.

"You he will spare," Aelward told his sister's husband. "He does not war
with you new-comers. But us of the old stock he claims as his prey. How
say you, Frenchman? Will you reason with him? Hereaways we are peaceful
folk, and would fain get on with our harvest."

"I will reason with him," said