to revenge. If thou wouldst send love to thy sister, take graphium
and parchment, and write fast as a scribe. Ere the sun is an hour
older, I am on my road to Count William."




CHAPTER V.


The Duke of the Normans was in the forest, or park land, of Rouvray,
and his Quens and his knights stood around him, expecting some new
proof of his strength and his skill with the bow. For the Duke was
trying some arrows, a weapon he was ever employed in seeking to
improve; sometimes shortening, sometimes lengthening, the shaft; and
suiting the wing of the feather, and the weight of the point, to the
nicest refinement in the law of mechanics. Gay and debonnair, in the
brisk fresh air of the frosty winter, the great Count jested and
laughed as the squires fastened a live bird by the string to a stake
in the distant sward; and "Pardex," said Duke William, "Conan of
Bretagne, and Philip of France, leave us now so unkindly in peace,
that I trow we shall never again have larger butt for our arrows than
the breast of yon poor plumed trembler."

As the Duke spoke and laughed, all the sere boughs behind him rattled
and cranched, and a horse at full speed came rushing over the hard
rime of the sward. The Duke's smile vanished in the frown of his
pride. "Bold rider and graceless," quoth he, "who thus comes in the
presence of counts and princes?"