ndle trees. Ridley has been
there this half-hour.'

The children followed his point, and saw Ridley the keeper in an old dry
ditch, watching Hobden as a cat watches a mouse.

'Huhh!' cried Una. 'Hobden always 'tends to his wires before breakfast.
He puts his rabbits into the faggots he's allowed to take home. He'll
tell us about 'em to-morrow.'

'We had the same breed in my day,' Sir Richard replied, and moved off
quietly, Puck at his bridle, the children on either side between the
close-trimmed beech stuff.

'What did you do to them?' said Dan, as they repassed Ridley's terrible
tree.

'That!' Sir Richard jerked his head toward the dangling owls.

'Not he,' said Puck. 'There was never enough brute Norman in you to hang
a man for taking a buck.'

'I--I cannot abide to hear their widows screech. But why am I on
horseback while you are afoot?' He dismounted lightly, tapped Swallow on
the chest, so that the wise thing backed instead of turning in the
narrow ride, and put himself at the head of the little procession. He
walked as though all the woods belonged to him. 'I have often told my
friends,' he went on, 'that Red William the King was not the only Norman
found dead in a forest while he hunted.'

'D'you mean William Rufus?' said Dan.

'Yes,' said Puck, kicking a clump of red toadstools off a dead log.

'For example, there was a knight new from Normandy,' Sir Richard went
on, 'to whom Henry our King granted a manor in Kent near by. He chose to
hang his forester's son the day before a deer-hunt that he gave to
pleasure the King.'

'Now when would that be?' said Puck, and scratched an ear thoughtfully.

'The summer of the year King Henry broke his brother Robert of Normandy
at Tenchebrai fight. Our ships were even then at Pevensey loading for
the war.'

'What happened to the knight?' Dan asked.

'They found him pinned to an ash, three arrows through his leather coat.
_I_ should have worn mail that day.'

'And did you see him all bloody?' Dan continued.

'Nay, I was with De Aquila at Pevensey, counting horse-shoes, and arrow
sheaves, and ale-barrels into the holds of the ships. The army only
waited for our King to lead them against Robert in Normandy, but he sent
word to De Aquila that he would hunt with him here before he set out for
France.'

'Why did the King want to hunt so particularly?' Una demanded.

'If he had gone straight to France after the Kentish knight was killed,
men would have said h