k figures waiting for them
with horses. In the pallid moonlight Myles recognized the well-known
face of Father Edward, the Prior of St. Mary's.

After that came a long ride through that silent night upon the
saddle-bow in front of Diccon Bowman; then a deep, heavy sleep, that
fell upon him in spite of the galloping of the horses.

When next he woke the sun was shining, and his home and his whole life
were changed.

CHAPTER 2

From the time the family escaped from Falworth Castle that midwinter
night to the time Myles was sixteen years old he knew nothing of the
great world beyond Crosbey-Dale. A fair was held twice in a twelvemonth
at the market-town of Wisebey, and three times in the seven years old
Diccon Bowman took the lad to see the sights at that place. Beyond these
three glimpses of the outer world he lived almost as secluded a life as
one of the neighboring monks of St. Mary's Priory.

Crosbey-Holt, their new home, was different enough from Falworth or
Easterbridge Castle, the former baronial seats of Lord Falworth. It was
a long, low, straw-thatched farm-house, once, when the church lands were
divided into two holdings, one of the bailiff's houses. All around were
the fruitful farms of the priory, tilled by well-to-do tenant holders,
and rich with fields of waving grain, and meadow-lands where sheep and
cattle grazed in flocks and herds; for in those days the church lands
were under church rule, and were governed by church laws, and there,
when war and famine and waste and sloth blighted the outside world,
harvests flourished and were gathered, and sheep were sheared and cows
were milked in peace and quietness.

The Prior of St. Mary's owed much if not all of the church's prosperity
to the blind Lord Falworth, and now he was paying it back with a haven
of refuge from the ruin that his former patron had brought upon himself
by giving shelter to Sir John Dale.

I fancy that most boys do not love the grinding of school life--the
lessons to be conned, the close application during study hours. It is
not often pleasant to brisk, lively lads to be so cooped up. I wonder
what the boys of to-day would have thought of Myles's training. With him
that training was not only of the mind, but of the body as well, and for
seven years it was almost unremitting. "Thou hast thine own way to
make in the world, sirrah," his father said more than once when the boy
complained of the grinding hardness of his life, and to m