shed them against his lips.
"Neither man nor king," he cried, "but the lover who has adored you
since he came to plunder but stayed to woo! Do you know that when I
came upon you to-day, my heart burst into flower as a tree blooms in the
spring-time? Had I a harp in my hand, my lips would blossom into song.
Get me one from your minstrels, and I will sing to you as we ride, and
we will forget that a day has passed since the time when first we roved
together through the Northampton meadows."

Forgetful of all the world beside, he led her away toward the horses.

Chapter XX. A Royal Reckoning

A tale is always half told if only one man tells it.
GRETTI'S SAGA.

Whether from policy or necessity, the guest-house of Gloucester Abbey
was surrendered to the royal band with open-armed hospitality. Every
comfort the place afforded was heaped together to soften the bare rooms
for the accommodation of the noble ladies; every delicacy the epicurean
abbot could obtain loaded the table; and what little grass the frost
had left in the cloister garth was sacrificed to the swarm of pages
and henchmen, minstrels and tumblers. Now a tournament of games in the
riverside meadows took up the day, now a pageant up the river itself;
again, a ride with the hawks or a run after the hounds,--and the nights
were one long revel. Time slipped by like a song off the lips of a
harper.

To-day it was to chase a boar over the wooded hills that the holiday
troop was awake and stirring at sunrise. The silvery bell-notes that
called the monks to morning prayer were jostled in mid-air by the
blare of hunters' horns. Stamping iron-shod hoofs and the baying of
deep-voiced hounds broke the stillness of the cloister, and threescore
merry voices laughed out of memory the Benedictine vow of silence.

Voices and horns made a joyous uproar when the King led forth his lady
and her fair following; and he smiled with pleasure at the welcome and
the picturesque beauty of the gay throng between the gray old walls.

"Now how could I come upon a better sight if I were the King of a
hundred islands?" he demanded of Elfgiva.

But he did not wait for her answer; instead, he stepped forward as
though to avoid it and put a question to one of his huntsmen. And his
wife turned and spoke sharply to the blond maiden behind her, whose more
than usual fairness had given her the name of Candida, or "the white
one."

"Where is Randalin? I sent th