before. Sir Daniel
looked with pride along the line.

"Here be the lads to serve you in a pinch," he said.

"They are pretty men, indeed," replied the messenger. "It but augments
my sorrow that ye had not marched the earlier."

"Well," said the knight, "what would ye? The beginning of a feast and
the end of a fray, sir messenger"; and he mounted into his saddle. "Why!
how now!" he cried. "John! Joanna! Nay, by the sacred rood! where is
she? Host, where is that girl?"

"Girl, Sir Daniel?" cried the landlord. "Nay, sir, I saw no girl."

"Boy, then, dotard!" cried the knight. "Could ye not see it was a wench?
She in the murrey-coloured mantle--she that broke her fast with water,
rogue--where is she?"

"Nay, the saints bless us! Master John, ye called him," said the host.
"Well, I thought none evil. He is gone. I saw him--her--I saw her in the
stable a good hour agone; 'a was saddling a grey horse."

"Now, by the rood!" cried Sir Daniel, "the wench was worth five hundred
pound to me and more."

"Sir knight," observed the messenger, with bitterness, "while that ye
are here, roaring for five hundred pounds, the realm of England is
elsewhere being lost and won."

"It is well said," replied Sir Daniel. "Selden, fall me out with six
cross-bowmen; hunt me her down. I care not what it cost; but, at my
returning, let me find her at the Moat House. Be it upon your head. And
now, sir messenger, we march."

And the troop broke into a good trot, and Selden and his six men were
left behind upon the street of Kettley, with the staring villagers.

CHAPTER II

IN THE FEN

It was near six in the May morning when Dick began to ride down into the
fen upon his homeward way. The sky was all blue; the jolly wind blew
loud and steady; the windmill sails were spinning; and the willows over
all the fen rippling and whitening like a field of corn. He had been all
night in the saddle, but his heart was good and his body sound, and he
rode right merrily.

The path went down and down into the marsh, till he lost sight of all
the neighbouring landmarks but Kettley windmill on the knoll behind him,
and the extreme top of Tunstall Forest far before. On either hand there
were great fields of blowing reeds and willows, pools of water shaking
in the wind, and treacherous bogs, as green as emerald, to tempt and to
betray the traveller. The path lay almost straight through the morass.
It was already very ancient; its foundation had be