their house -- grafts of the parent stock. The Gascon peasants looked at
them with pride, and murmured that the day would come when they would
show the world the mettle of which they were made. Those were stirring
times for Gascony -- when Gascony was a fief of the English Crown,
sorely coveted by the French monarch, but tenaciously held on to by the
"Roy Outremer," as the great Edward was called; the King who, as was
rumoured, was claiming as his own the whole realm of France. And
Gascony, it must be remembered, did not in those days hold herself to be
a part of France nor a part of the French monarchy. She held a much more
important place than she would have done had she been a mere fief of the
French Crown. She had a certain independence of her own -- her own
language, her own laws, her own customs and she saw no humiliation in
owning the sovereignty of England's King, since she bad passed under
English rule through no act of conquest or aggression on England's part,
but by the peaceful fashion of marriage, when nearly two centuries ago
Eleanor of Aquitaine had brought to her lord, King Henry the Second, the
fair lands of which Gascony formed a part. Gascony had grown and
flourished apace since then, and was rich, prosperous, and content. Her
lords knew how important she might be in days to come, when the
inevitable struggle between the rival Kings of France and England should
commence; and like an accomplished coquette, she made the most of her
knowledge, and played her part well, watching her opportunity for
demanding an increase of those rights and privileges of which she had
not a few already.

But it was not of their country's position that the twin brothers were
so eagerly talking as they wandered together along the woodland paths.
It was little indeed that they knew of what was passing in the wide
world that lay beyond their peaceful home, little that they heard of the
strife of party or the suspicious jealousy of two powerful monarchs --