they had done; "but I fear that one of you may find that vow hard
to keep. By all the saints, nephews, you were right when you said
that you asked a great boon. Do you know, although I have told
you nothing of it, that, not to speak of the knave Lozelle,
already two of the greatest men in this land have sought my
daughter Rosamund in marriage?"

"It may well be so," said Wulf.

"It is so, and now I will tell you why one or other of the pair
is not her husband, which in some ways I would he were. A simple
reason. I asked her, and she had no mind to either, and as her
mother married where her heart was, so I have sworn that the
daughter should do, or not at all--for better a nunnery than a
loveless bridal.

"Now let us see what you have to give. You are of good
blood--that of Uluin by your mother, and mine, also on one side
her own. As squires to your sponsors of yesterday, the knights
Sir Anthony de Mandeville and Sir Roger de Merci, you bore
yourselves bravely in the Scottish War; indeed, your liege king
Henry remembered it, and that is why he granted my prayer so
readily. Since then, although you loved the life little, because
I asked it of you, you have rested here at home with me, and done
no feats of arms, save that great one of two months gone which
made you knights, and, in truth, gives you some claim on
Rosamund.

"For the rest, your father being the younger son, your lands are
small, and you have no other gear. Outside the borders of this