earless eye, the haughty air of those
born to command. A second, our readers would have recognised as a
typical English boy; his nut-brown hair and blue eyes contrasted
strongly with the features of his companions, so marked then were
those differences which have long since vanished--vanished, or at
least have become so shared amongst the English people, that none
can say which is of Anglo-Saxon, which of Norman blood, by the cast
of the face.

And this English lad, whose dress in no wise distinguished him from
his companions, was evidently ill at ease amongst them; from time
to time he reddened as Etienne, Pierre, or Louis called the unhappy
thralls "English swine," "young porkers," or the like, and bestowed
upon them far more kicks than coins.

"You forget, Etienne, that I am English."

"Nay, my brother Wilfred, thou wilt not allow me to do that, but of
course in thy case 'noblesse oblige.'"

These last words were uttered with a most evident sneer, and the
other lads laughed aloud; whereupon the English lad reddened, then
his fists clenched, and a looker-on would have expected an
immediate outbreak, when suddenly a change passed over his
features, as if he were making a violent effort at self composure.

"Thou hast dropped an arrow, thou young porker," cried Etienne, the
while he struck a violent blow with his switch across the face and
eyes of one of his attendants; "dost thou think there are so few of
thy fellow swine to shoot, that arrows are useless in these woods!
Ah! look at that sight there, and take timely warning."

The sight in question was a gallows, from which rotted, pendant,
the corpse of an unhappy Englishman, hanged for killing a deer.

"If every oak in Aescendune woods bore such acorns, civilised folk
might soon be happy."

Wilfred uttered a deep malediction, which he could not suppress,
and, leaving the party, disappeared from sight in the woods.

One of the Norman lads looked after him with some little appearance
of sympathy, and when he had gone, said:

"Is it like gentlemen to torment each other thus?"

"Not each other, certainly!"

"He is your brother in a way, the son of your stepmother, the lady
of Aescendune."

"He is in a way, but some brothers would be better out of the way
than in it, besides--why does he not show fight? A Norman would
with half the provocation."

"You could not fight with him," said Louis de Marmontier, who was
the youngest of the pages who were learning