CHAPTER I


It was the last of May in the north of England, in the year 1209. A
very different England from what any boy of to-day has seen. A chilly
east wind was blowing. The trees of the vast forests were all in leaf
but the ash trees, and they were unfolding their buds. And along a
bridle-path a few miles southwest of York a lad of fourteen was riding,
while behind him followed a handsome deerhound. A boy of fourteen, at
that age of the world, was an older and more important personage than
he is to-day. If he were well-born he had, generally, by this time,
served his time as a page and was become an esquire in the train of
some noble lord. That this lad had not done so was because his uncle, a
prior in whose charge he had been reared since the early death of his
parents, had designed him for a priest. Priest, however, he had
declined to be, and his uncle had now permitted him to go forth
unattended to attach himself as page to some lord, if he could.

To-day he seemed very much at home in the great wood as he glanced
about him fearlessly, but so he would have been anywhere. Apparently he
was unprotected from assault save by the bow he carried. In reality he
wore a shirt of chain mail beneath his doublet, a precaution which he
the more willingly took because of his good hope one day to be a
knight, when not only the shirt of mail, but the helmet, shield, sword,
and lance would be his as well.

It was not far from noon when he came to the great open place cleared