er are afoot makes cripples and
crones young again. De Aquila laughed when Hugh told him over the list
of beaters. Half were women; and many of the rest were clerks--Saxon and
Norman priests.

'Hugh and I had not time to laugh for eight days, till De Aquila, as
Lord of Pevensey, met our King and led him to the first shooting
stand--by the Mill on the edge of the forest. Hugh and I--it was no work
for hot heads or heavy hands--lay with our beaters on the skirts of
Dallington to watch both them and the deer. When De Aquila's great horn
blew we went forward, a line half a league long. Oh, to see the fat
clerks, their gowns tucked up, puffing and roaring, and the sober
millers dusting the undergrowth with their staves; and, like as not,
between them a Saxon wench, hand in hand with her man, shrilling like a
kite as she ran, and leaping high through the fern, all for joy of the
sport.'

'_Ah! How! Ah! How! How-ah! Sa-how-ah!_' Puck bellowed without warning,
and Swallow bounded forward, ears cocked, and nostrils cracking.

'_Hal-lal-lal-lal-la-hai-ie!_' Sir Richard answered in a high clear
shout.

The two voices joined in swooping circles of sound, and a heron rose out
of a red osier bed below them, circling as though he kept time to the
outcry. Swallow quivered and swished his glorious tail. They stopped
together on the same note.

A hoarse shout answered them across the bare woods.

'That's old Hobden,' said Una.

'Small blame to him. It is in his blood,' said Puck. 'Did your beaters
cry so, Sir Richard?'

'My faith, they forgot all else. (Steady, Swallow, steady!) They forgot
where the King and his people waited to shoot. They followed the deer to
the very edge of the open till the first flight of wild arrows from the
stands flew fair over them.

'I cried, "'Ware shot! 'Ware shot!" and a knot of young knights new from
Normandy, that had strayed away from the Grand Stand, turned about, and
in mere sport loosed off at our line shouting: "'Ware Senlac arrows!
'Ware Senlac arrows!" A jest, I grant you, but too sharp. One of our
beaters answered in Saxon: "'Ware New Forest arrows! 'Ware Red William's
arrow!" so I judged it time to end the jests, and when the boys saw my
old mail gown (for, to shoot with strangers _I_ count the same as war),
they ceased shooting. So _that_ was smoothed over, and we gave our
beaters ale to wash down their anger. They were excusable! We--they had
sweated to show our guests good sport,