"Thou hast dropped an arrow, thou young porker," cried Etienne, the
while he struck a violent blow with his switch across the face and
eyes of one of his attendants; "dost thou think there are so few of
thy fellow swine to shoot, that arrows are useless in these woods!
Ah! look at that sight there, and take timely warning."
The sight in question was a gallows, from which rotted, pendant,
the corpse of an unhappy Englishman, hanged for killing a deer.
"If every oak in Aescendune woods bore such acorns, civilised folk
might soon be happy."
Wilfred uttered a deep malediction, which he could not suppress,
and, leaving the party, disappeared from sight in the woods.
One of the Norman lads looked after him with some little appearance
of sympathy, and when he had gone, said:
"Is it like gentlemen to torment each other thus?"
"Not each other, certainly!"
"He is your brother in a way, the son of your stepmother, the lady
of Aescendune."
"He is in a way, but some brothers would be better out of the way
than in it, besides--why does he not show fight? A Norman would
with half the provocation."
"You could not fight with him," said Louis de Marmontier, who was
the youngest of the pages who were learning "chivalry" at the
castle of Aescendune, in company with Etienne and Wilfred, under
the fostering care of the baron.
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