who had formed her strong rearward guard on her flight from Winchester castle, the Earl of Hereford alone reached Gloucester castle, and he arrived in a wretched state, being wounded and almost naked. The other barons and knights who escaped from the fight of Stourbridge threw away their arms and essayed to escape in the disguise of peasants; but some of them, betrayed by their foreign speech, were seized by the English serfs, who bound them with cords and drove them before them with whips to deliver them up to their enemies. Yea some of the churls did cruelly maltreat and maim these proud knights from beyond sea, thereby taking vengeance for the great wrongs and cruelties which by them had been committed. Nay men of prelatical dignity were not respected, for they had had no bowels for the people, who now stripped them naked and scourged them. The King of Scots, Matilda's uncle, got safe back to his own kingdom; but her half-brother, the most important prisoner that could be taken, was conveyed to Stephen's queen Maud, who laid him fast in Rochester castle, but without loading him with chains as Matilda had done unto Stephen, for Queen Maud was merciful and generous of heart. Sir Alain de Bohun, who had joined the legate with a good force before the siege of Winchester Castle was begun, made haste to enter into that castle when it was abandoned by Matilda and given up by the few soldiers that remained in it. It was no thirst for blood and no appetite for plunder that made our good Caversham lord enter into the fortalice; but it was his fatherly love for his only boy, and his tenderness for the little Alice, who had grown up as his daughter. He thought that in so hurried and rough a departure the children whom he had traced to Winchester Castle must have been left therein; but although he searched every part of the castle, as well below ground as above, he could not find the children, or any trace of them, nor could he from the prisoners taken learn more than that a fine young boy and a beautiful little girl, together with sundry foreign damsels, had been sent from Winchester a day or twain before the legate commenced the siege of the castle. Sir Alain, albeit sorely disappointed, thanked Heaven that the children had not been separated. A little later in this year's terrible war, when Sir Alain de Bohun had discomfited a force commanded by Sir Ingelric of Huntercombe, his once cherished friend, but now his deadliest foe, and had well nigh taken Sir Ingelric prisoner, a writing was in secret delivered unto the good lord of Caversham by one who wore pilgrim's weeds, but who was a wolf in sheep's clothing, and, in verity, a fautor and spy of the countess. Sir Alain being competently learned, and well able to read without the assistance of his mass-priest, who was not there to aid him, did peruse the secret missive, which did tell him in the name of Matilda that she had his son in sure-keeping, and would