Stay here, and play the man.'

"So, by the messenger, I sent thee back a letter, asking thee to write
me word how it was that thou, being my betrothed, hadst come to do this
thing; and whether Humphry was good to thee, and making thy life
pleasant. To Humphry I sent a letter saying that, thy love being round
him as a silver shield, I would not slay him, wound him, or touch him!
But--if he used thee ill, or gave thee any grief or sorrow, then would
I come, forthwith, and send him straight to hell.

"These letters, with others from the camp, went back to England by that
clerkly messenger. No answers were returned to mine.

"Meanwhile I went, with my despair, out to the battlefield.

"No tender shield was round me any more. I fought, like a mad wild
beast. So often was I wounded, that they dubbed me 'The Knight of the
Bloody Vest.'

"At last they brought me back to camp, delirious and dying. My cousin
'Frida, there biding her time, nursed me back to life, and sought to
win for herself (I shame to say it) the love which thou hadst flouted.
I need not tell thee, my cousin 'Frida failed. The Queen herself as
good as bid me wed her favourite Lady. The Queen herself had to
discover that she could command an English soldier's life, but not his
love.

"Back in the field again, I found myself one day, cut off, surrounded,
hewn down, taken prisoner; but by a generous foe.

"Thereafter followed years of much adventure; escapes, far distant
wanderings, strange company. Many months I spent in a mountain
fastness with a wise Hebrew Rabbi, who taught me his sacred Scriptures;
going back to the beginning of all things, before the world was; yet
shrewd in judgment of the present, and throwing a weird light forward
upon the future. A strange man; wise, as are all of that Chosen Race;
and a faithful friend. He did much to heal my hurt and woo me back to
sanity.

"Later, more than a year with a band of holy monks in a desert
monastery, high among the rocks; good Fathers who believed in Greek and
Latin as surest of all balsams for a wounded spirit, and who made me to
become deeply learned in Apostolic writings, and in the teachings of
the Church. But, for all their best endeavours, I could not feel
called to the perpetual calm of the Cloister. We are a line of
fighters and hunters, men to whom pride of race and love of hearth and
home, are primal instincts.

"Thus, after many further wanderings and much varying advent