that he hath no thought of my pretensions to the English throne,--that
he inclines willingly to thy suggestions to come himself to my court
for the hostages,--that, in a word, he is not suspicious."

"Certes, he is not suspicious," returned Mallet.

"And thinkest thou that an artful castle were worth much without
warder or sentry,--or a cultivated mind strong and safe, without its
watchman,--Suspicion?"

"Truly, my lord speaks well and wisely," said the knight, startled;
"but Harold is a man thoroughly English, and the English are a gens
the least suspecting of any created thing between an angel and a
sheep."

William laughed aloud. But his laugh was checked suddenly; for at
that moment a fierce yell smote his ears, and looking hastily up, he
saw his hound and his son rolling together on the ground, in a grapple
that seemed deadly. William sprang to the spot; but the boy, who was
then under the dog, cried out, "Laissez aller! Laissez aller! no
rescue! I will master my own foe;" and, so saying, with a vigorous
effort he gained his knee, and with both hands griped the hound's
throat, so that the beast twisted in vain, to and fro, with gnashing
jaws, and in another minute would have panted out its last.

"I may save my good hound now," said William, with the gay smile of
his earlier days, and, though not without some exertion of his
prodigious strength, he drew the dog from his son's grasp.

"That was ill done, father," said Robert, surnamed even then the