converse. I say not that I liked the youth himself. He seemed to me
something over bold, yet lacking in those graces of chivalry that are so
dear to us. Still it was in talking with him that I heard this thing
which has set my blood boiling in my veins."

"What thing is that, fair Prince?" asked John.

And then the young Edward told his tale. It was such a tale as was only
too often heard in olden days, though it did not always reach the ears
of royalty. The long and expensive, and as yet somewhat fruitless, wars
in which Edward had been engaged almost ever since he came to the
throne, had greatly impoverished his subjects, and with poverty there
arose those other evils inseparable from general distress -- robbery,
freebooting, crime in its darkest and ugliest aspects; bands of hungry
men, ruined and beggared, partly perhaps through misfortune, but partly
through their own fault, wandering about the country ravaging and
robbing, leaving desolation behind them, and too often, if opposed,
committing acts of brutal cruelty upon defenceless victims, as a warning
to others.

A band such as this was just now scouring the woods around Guildford.
Young Vavasour had heard of depredations committed close against the
walls of his own home, and had heard of many outrages which had been
suffered by the poor folks around. Cattle had been driven off, their
hardly-gathered fuel had vanished in the night; sometimes lonely houses
were attacked, and the miserable inhabitants, if they offered
resistance, stabbed to the heart by the marauders. One or two girls had
been missed from their homes, and were said to have fallen a prey to the
robber band. All these things, and the latter item especially, stirred
the hot blood in the young Prince's veins, and he was all on fire to do