r a long time neither had
any advantage, till by pure ill-fortune his foot slipped and his sword
flew from his hand. Now I had but newly been made knight, and wished,
above all, to be courteous and fameworthy, so I forebore to strike and
bade him get his sword again. "A plague on my sword," said he. "It has
lost me my first fight. You have spared my life. Take my sword." He held
it out to me, but as I stretched my hand the sword groaned like a stricken
man, and I leaped back crying, "Sorcery!"

[The children looked at the sword as though it might speak again.]

'Suddenly a clump of Saxons ran out upon me and, seeing a Norman alone,
would have killed me, but my Saxon cried out that I was his prisoner, and
beat them off. Thus, see you, he saved my life. He put me on my horse and
led me through the woods ten long miles to this valley.'

'To here, d'you mean?' said Una.

'To this very valley. We came in by the Lower Ford under the King's Hill
yonder'--he pointed eastward where the valley widens.

'And was that Saxon Hugh the novice?' Dan asked.

'Yes, and more than that. He had been for three years at the monastery at
Bec by Rouen, where'--Sir Richard chuckled--'the Abbot Herluin would not
suffer me to remain.'

'Why wouldn't he?' said Dan.

'Because I rode my horse into the refectory, when the scholars were at
meat, to show the Saxon boys we Normans were not afraid of an abbot. It
was that very Saxon Hugh tempted me to do it, and we had not met since
that day. I thought I knew his voice even inside my helmet, and, for all
that our Lords fought, we each rejoiced we had not slain the other. He
walked by my side, and he told me how a Heathen God, as he believed, had
given him his sword, but he said he had never heard it sing before. I
remember I warned him to beware of sorcery and quick enchantments.' Sir
Richard smiled to himself. 'I was very young--very young!

'When we came to his house here we had almost forgotten that we had been
at blows. It was near midnight, and the Great Hall was full of men and
women waiting news. There I first saw his sister, the Lady AElueva, of whom
he had spoken to us in France. She cried out fiercely at me, and would
have had me hanged in that hour, but her brother said that I had spared
his life--he said not how he saved mine from his Saxons--and that our Duke
had won the day; and even while they wrangled over my poor body, of a
sudden he fell down in a swoon from his wounds.

'"Thi