that no change of condition should ever alter his feelings of affection
towards them. It was not until the late hour of nine o'clock that he said
goodbye to his foster parents, for he was next day to repair to the lodging
of Sir Walter Manny, who was to sail again before the week was out for the
Low Countries, from which he had only returned for a few days to have
private converse with the king on the state of matters there. His friends
would have delivered to him his mother's ring and other tokens which she
had left, but thought it better to keep these, with the other proofs of his
birth, until his claim was established to the satisfaction of the lord
justiciaries.

The next morning early, when Walter descended the stairs, he found Ralph
Smith waiting for him. His face was strapped up with plaster and he wore
his arm in a sling, for his armour had been twice cut through as he led his
party in through the sally-port.

"How goes it with you, Ralph?" Walter said. "Not much the worse, I hope,
for your hard knocks?"

"Not a whit," Ralph replied cheerfully, "and I shall be all right again
before the week is out; but the leech made as much fuss over me as if I had
been a girl, just as though one was not accustomed to hard knocks in a
smithy. Those I got yesterday were not half so hard as that which you gave
me the day before. My head rings yet with the thought of it. But I have
not come to talk about myself. Is the story true which they tell of you,
Master Walter, that you are not the son of Giles the bowyer, but of a great
noble?"

"Not of a great noble, Ralph, but of a gallant knight, which is just as
good. My father was killed when I was three years old, and my mother