se's flank, and he lashed out and reared as if he was
hurt. My rein was loose, and I was bending carelessly over to take
the horn, and it was all that I could do to keep my seat for the
moment. As for the girl, she dropped the horn and ran from the
plunging horse into the doorway for safety.

Then I heard the sharp crack of a whip, and the voice of the head
huntsman speaking angrily:

"Out on you for a silly oaf!--What mean you by going near the thane
at all?"

The whip cracked again, and the long lash curled round the
shoulders of a ragged thrall, who tried in vain to escape it.

"On my word, I believe you did it on purpose!" the huntsman cried,
with a third shrewd lash that found its lodgment rightly.

"Mercy, Master," mumbled the man, writhing; "it is this terrible
crossing of the eyes. I do not rightly see where I go."

I had quieted the horse by this time, and I held up my hand to stay
the lash from the thrall. Some one picked up the horn that the girl
had let fall.

"Let him be," I said. "It could but have been a chance, and he is
lucky not to have been kicked. See, he does squint most amazingly."

"Ay," growled the huntsman, "so he does; but I never knew a
cross-eyed man before who had any trouble in walking straight
enough."

The thrall slunk away among his fellows. He was a round-shouldered
man with hay-coloured hair and a stubby beard of the same, and he
rubbed his shoulders with his elbows lifted as he went. Then the
steward gave me a fresh horn, and we said farewell to our host and
hostess, and Erpwald and I went our way.

"I thought that the horse would have knocked the Welsh girl over,"
he said presently. "She was pretty nimble, however. That churl must
have kicked your horse sharply to make him plunge as he did."

"Trod on his fetlock most likely," I answered. "Clumsy knave."

"Well, that huntsman knows how to use a lash, at all events, and he
will have a care in future. But how my head does ache!"

"That is likely enough," I said, laughing. "It was a shrewd knock,
and it kept you in that hole for the longest hour and a half I have
ever known."

"It does take somewhat out of the common to hurt me much," he said
simply.

"Well, by tomorrow you will be famed all over Glastonbury as the
man who fell over Cheddar cliffs and escaped by reason of lighting
on the thickest part of him," I answered.

It was a poor jest enough, but it set him laughing. I did not wish
him to say more of what ha