left me to trudge hither in the mire."

"Wretched boy!" said the Lady Godiva, and hid her face in her hands; "and
more wretched I, to have brought such a son into the world!"

The monk had hardly finished his doleful story, when there was a pattering
of heavy feet, a noise of men shouting and laughing outside, and a voice,
above all, calling for the monk by name, which made that good man crouch
behind the curtain of Lady Godiva's bed. The next moment the door of the
bower was thrown violently open, and in walked, or rather reeled, a noble
lad eighteen years old. His face was of extraordinary beauty, save that
the lower jaw was too long and heavy, and that his eyes wore a strange and
almost sinister expression, from the fact that the one of them was gray
and the other blue. He was short, but of immense breadth of chest and
strength of limb; while his delicate hands and feet and long locks of
golden hair marked him of most noble, and even, as he really was, of
ancient royal race. He was dressed in a gaudy costume, resembling on the
whole that of a Highland chieftain. His knees, wrists, and throat were
tattoed in bright blue patterns; and he carried sword and dagger, a gold
ring round his neck, and gold rings on his wrists. He was a lad to have
gladdened the eyes of any mother: but there was no gladness in the Lady
Godiva's eyes as she received him; nor had there been for many a year. She
looked on him with sternness,--with all but horror; and he, his face
flushed with wine, which he had tossed off as he passed through the hall
to steady his nerves for the coming storm, looked at her with smiling
defiance, the result of long estrangement between mother and son.

"Well, my lady," said he, ere she could speak, "I heard that this good
fellow was here, and came home as fast as I could, to see that he told you
as few lies as possible."