been
some young potentate instead of a mere handsome lad of twelve.

"If they were a band of barbarians and he their boy chief they could
pay him no more court nor joy in him more," Roxholm reflected. "Is it
his beauty or--what means it?"

He could not withdraw his eyes from the boy, who sat his fretting
hunter among them, sometimes scarcely able to restrain the animal's
fiery temper or keep him from lashing out his heels orbiting at the
beasts nearest to him. Now he trotted from one man to the other as the
group scattered somewhat; now he sat half turned back, his hand on his
steed's hind quarters, flinging words and laughter to the outside man.

"Thou'lt have to use scissors again on thy periwig, ecod!" one man
cried, banteringly.

"Damme, yes," the youngster rapped out, and he caught a rich lock of
his hair and drew it forward to look at it, frowning. "What's a man to
do when his hair grows like a girl's?"

The answer was greeted with a shout of laughter, and the boy burst
forth with a laugh likewise, showing two rows of ivory teeth. Somehow
there was an imperial deviltry about him, an impudent wild spirit which
had plainly made him conqueror, favourite, and plaything of the whole
disreputable crew.

Men were not fastidious talkers in those times; the cleanest mouthed of
them giving themselves plenty of license when they were in spirits.
Roxholm had heard broad talk enough at the University, where the young
gentlemen indulged in conversation no more restrained than was that of
their elders and betters; he had heard the jokes and profanity of both
camp and Court since he had left Oxford, and had learned that
squeamishness was far from being the fashion. But never had he heard
such oath-sprinkled talk or such open obscenity of joking as fell upon
his ears this morning in but a brief space. Hearing it in spite of
himself, his blood grew hot and his horse began to paw the earth, he,
in his irritation, having unknowingly fretted its mouth. And then one
of the company, an elderly sportsman with a watery eye, began a story.

"Good God!" Roxholm broke forth to the man nearest to him, one not of
the party, but evidently one who found it diverting; "good God! Can
they not restrain themselves before a child? Let them be decent for his
mere youth's sake! The lad is not thirteen."

The man started and stared at him a moment with open mouth, and then
burst into a loud guffaw of laughter.

"The lad!" he cried, roaring an