the outlaws? You almost let out the secret today."

"Yes, I was born in the woods."

"Then you are not of gentle blood?"

"That depends upon what you mean by gentle blood. I am not of
Norman blood by my father's side, although my mother may be, from
whom I get my dark features: my father was descended from the old
English lords of Michelham, who lived on the island for ages before
the Conquest; my mother's family is unknown to me."

"Indeed! what became of your English forbears?"

"Robert de Mortain contrived their ruin, but dearly did his race
pay for it in the justice of God. His ghost, or that of his son,
still haunts Pevensey: but all that is past and gone. Earl Simon
sometimes says (you heard him perhaps the other day) that the
English are of as good blood as the Normans, and that he should be
proud to call himself an Englishman.

"He is worthy of the name," said Martin, and Hubert smiled; 'but it
is not that--I want to be a scholar, and by and by a priest."

"The very thing they wanted to make me, and I wouldn't for the
world; what a pity we could not change places. Ah! what is that?"

A crushing of brambles and parting of bushes was heard, and lo! a
deer, with a little fawn by its side, came across the glade,
looking very frightened. The mother was restraining her own speed