is easier to dig out a badger gone to
earth than a Saxon gone dumb-sullen. And atop of their misery the
old rumour waked that Harold the Saxon was alive and would bring them
deliverance from us Normans. This has happened every autumn since
Santlache fight.'

'But King Harold was killed at Hastings,'said Una.

'So it was said, and so it was believed by us Normans, but our Saxons
always believed he would come again. That rumour did not make our work
any more easy.'

Sir Richard strode on down the far slope of the wood, where the trees
thin out. It was fascinating to watch how he managed his long spurs
among the lumps of blackened ling.

'But we did it!' he said. 'After all, a woman is as good as a man to
beat the woods, and the mere word that deer 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 under-growth 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