In half an hour we had come by roundabout ways to the hazel copse where Marcel and the horses awaited us. In silence we mounted, and in silence rode through all the hours of darkness, Cedric sitting with head bowed forward, enwrapped in gloomy thought as in a sable garment. The way was rough and weary, and we found no solace in the fragrance of the harvest fields and leaf-strewn woods or in the song of the night wind. As the sun rose behind a veil of gray and chilling mists, we climbed the slopes of Rowan Hill and sighted the towers of Mountjoy. CHAPTER XII—THE IRON COLLAR A year had passed since our ill-fated venture beneath the walls of Kimberley, and ’twas such an autumn morning as makes one forget his cares and sorrows and those of a strife-torn world, and believe in the coming of a better day. Cedric and I had promised ourselves rare sport in the woods of Grimsby. The sky overhead was of brightest blue, and the sunlight filtered sweetly through the boughs of oak and beech that now had dropped the half of their leaves to make a rustling carpet underfoot. In the treetops the birds sang lustily, making the best of the smiling time that comes before the winter’s winds and snows. Now and again a woodmouse scampered on fallen log, a hare sprang away from her form, or a moorfowl scuttled to cover in the bracken. To me there were never sweeter sights and sounds and fragrances than those of autumn woodlands; and to Cedric, the son of a Pelham forester, they were as native and joyous as the brown brook waters to the speckled trout or the green hill pastures to the Mountjoy kine. Since my comrade and former squire had been knighted at Wenderley, after the victory over the Welsh at the Pass of the Eagles, we at Mountjoy had grown well used to think of him as Sir Cedric De La Roche, the name conferred by the Lord High Constable when he made him knight and chevalier. But a newer honor had come to him but four months past; and though ’twas well deserved and a most gracious act of our liege lord, the Lion Hearted Richard, we yet could scarce conceive of its reality. De Lacey, the High Constable, who with the backing of all the Mountjoys and Carletons, had well served the King in the Western counties in the struggle against his usurping brother, John, after the King’s return from the German captivity, had told to him the tale of the Welsh battle and something of Cedric’s more recent services. Then he had hinted that the fee of Grimsby had been vacant, save for the royal stewards, ever since Sir James Dunwoodie and his brother had perished in the Battle at the Pass. Forthwith the King summoned secretaries to write at his bidding; and shortly a herald arrived at Castle Mountjoy with letters patent, making our Cedric the Knight of Grimsby and conferring on him in fee the lands and manor house and all the rights Dunwoodie had before.