of his
age, if not the very greatest.

The only sign of discipline he saw was the careful grooming of some
horses, which he rightly guessed to be those ridden by the knights, and
the equally careful polishing of pieces of armour before the doors of
the huts. He wished now to inquire his way to the king's levy, but as
the question rose to his lips he checked himself, remembering the
caution the friendly carters had given him. He therefore determined to
walk about the camp till he found some evidence that he was in the
immediate neighbourhood of the king.

He rose, stood about a little while to allay any possible suspicion
(quite needless precautions, for the soldiers were far too agreeably
engaged to take the least notice of him), and then sauntered off with as
careless an air as he could assume. Looking about him, first at a forge
where the blacksmith was shoeing a horse, then at a grindstone, where a
knight's sword was being sharpened, he was nearly knocked down by a
horse, urged at some speed through the crowds. By a rope from the
collar, three dead bodies were drawn along the ground, dusty and
disfigured by bumping against stone and clod. They were those of slaves,
hanged the preceding day, perhaps for pilfering, perhaps for a mere
whim, since every baron had power of the gallows.

They were dragged through the camp, and out a few hundred yards beyond,
and there left to the crows. This horrible sight, to which the rest were
so accustomed and so indifferent that they did not even turn to look at
it, deeply shocked him; the drawn and distorted features, the tongues
protruding and literally licking the dust, haunted him for long after.
Though his father, as a baron, possessed the same power, it had never
been exercised during his tenure of the estate, so that Felix had not
been hardened to the sight of executions, common enough elsewhere. Upon
the Old House estate a species of negative humanity reigned; if the
slaves were not emancipated, they were not hanged or cruelly beaten for
trifles.

Hastening from the spot, Felix came across the artillery, which
consisted of battering rams and immense crossbows; the bows were made
from entire trees, or, more properly, poles. He inspected these clumsy
contrivances with interest, and entered into a conversation with some
men who were fitting up the framework on which a battering ram was to
swing. Being extremely conceited with themselves and the knowledge they
had acquired fr