t were of gentle blood, and their office
was well-nigh hereditary. The Birkenholts had held it for many
generations, and the reversion passed as a matter of course to the
eldest son of the late holder, who had newly been laid in the burial-
ground of Beaulieu Abbey. John Birkenholt, whose mother had been of
knightly lineage, had resented his father's second marriage with the
daughter of a yeoman on the verge of the Forest, suspected of a strain
of gipsy blood, and had lived little at home, becoming a sort of agent
at Southampton for business connected with the timber which was yearly
cut in the Forest to supply material for the shipping. He had wedded
the daughter of a person engaged in law business at Southampton, and had
only been an occasional visitor at home, ever after the death of his
stepmother. She had left these two boys, unwelcome appendages in his
sight. They had obtained a certain amount of education at Beaulieu
Abbey, where a school was kept, and where Ambrose daily studied, though
for the last few months Stephen had assisted his father in his forest
duties.

Death had come suddenly to break up the household in the early spring of
1515, and John Birkenholt had returned as if to a patrimony, bringing
his wife and children with him. The funeral ceremonies had been
conducted at Beaulieu Abbey on the extensive scale of the sixteenth
century, the requiem, the feast, and the dole, all taking place there,
leaving the Forest lodge in its ordinary quiet.

It had always been understood that on their father's death the two
younger sons must make their own way in the world; but he had hoped to
live until they were a little older, when he might himself have started
them in life, or expressed his wishes respecting them to their elder
brother. As it was, however, there was no commendation of them, nothing
but a strip of parchment, drawn up by one of the monks of Beaulieu,
leaving each of them twenty crowns, with a few small jewels and
properties left by their own mother, while everything else went to their
brother.

There might have been some jealousy excited by the estimation in which
Stephen's efficiency--boy as he was--was evidently held by the plain-
spoken underlings of the verdurer; and this added to Mistress
Birkenholt's dislike to the presence of her husband's half-brothers,
whom she regarded as interlopers without a right to exist. Matters were
brought to a climax by old Spring's resentment at being ro