This medicine the baron--for to such rank had Hugo de Malville been
raised, on his accession to the lands of Aescendune--this medicine
he would always administer with his own hand. Sometimes Wilfred was
standing by, and noticed that, dropped in water, it diffused at
first a sapphire hue, but that upon exposure to the air, that of
the ruby succeeded.
Oh, those days of anxiety and grief--those days when the loved
patient was so manifestly loosing her hold upon life, although
sometimes there would come a tantalising change for the better, and
bring back hopes never to be realised.
The boyish reader will easily imagine what Wilfred had to bear all
this time from his Norman companions, from whose society there was
no escape--with whom he had to share not only the very few hours
allotted to study, but those of recreation also. Study, indeed,
meant chiefly the use and practice of warlike weapons, the learning
of the technical terms of chivalry, and the acquirement, it may be,
of sufficient letters to spell through a challenge.
So thoroughly was war the Norman instinct, that every occupation of
life was more or less connected with it; and the only recreation
which varied the hours of fencing, jousting, tilting, etc., was the
kindred excitement of the chase, pursued with the greatest avidity
amongst the wooded hills around Aescendune.
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