“Ah, good morrow, gentlemen! Well met, Mountjoy and Grimsby both. Grimsby, we have to crave thy leave to ride through thy lands in search of a murdering villain that hath escaped us at Gilroy.” “A murderer, sayst thou?” answered Cedric, “whom hath he slain?” [Illustration: _BOTH WERE RED OF FACE WITH HURRY, AND THEIR HORSES WERE WELL LATHERED AND BREATHING HARD_] “’Tis Simon, my dogmaster. He lies at the point of death, or is dead for aught I know by this time, his skull near crushed with a cudgel. ’Twas my thrall, Egbert, a surly fellow well deserving of the hangman’s noose, that thus assaulted him. It seems the dogmaster had found him sore abusing one o’ the best of our hounds, and had rated him soundly, threatening a report to me of his actions. I saw but the end of the matter and that from a distance, and with Philip here have ridden hard after him. The varlet made at once for the woods and has thus far escaped us; but we will run him to earth, if it take the whole of Gilroy. “A surly fellow indeed!” exclaimed Sir Cedric. “’Tis well that he be apprehended quickly, else he’ll join some outlaw band, and bid us all defiance. Thou may’st ride through my lands at will for his capture—or we may chance upon him in the wood. How may we know him?” Lord Gilroy smiled, but in a hard, grim way he hath that is more menacing than any frown. “’Tis easy knowing him. He wears an iron collar, like all my thralls, bearing his own name and mine in graven letters. It makes the hunting of them far easier when they have done some violence, or if they attempt to fly from my lands. But give you good day, messieurs! We must fare on. If so be you get sight of him, a cross-bow quarrel would not be amiss if he stop not on order. And if you take and send him to me, I will be much beholden. Our thralls must be kept well in leash, e’en if that leash be on occasion a hangman’s knot. Come Philip, ride to the left, I pray thee, while I follow this path through yonder thicket.” Cedric and I walked on, talking of this bloody mischief, and of the chances of the thrall’s recapture. Somehow the brightness had gone from the sun glints, and the woodland seemed no longer a forest enchanted where nymphs and elves might dance away from hollowed tree or the gray-haired wizard, Merwin, be seen upon a mossy rock, summoning by magic spells a troop of Arthur’s chivalry. “’Tis true this fellow must be taken,” said Cedric, sadly, “for such as he make up the outlaw bands that now and again give trouble sore to honest men. But I know not for the life of me why men that are born and die upon this green earth like any others, and that have as good a wish to live unhampered as you and I, should wear upon their necks collars of iron that mark them forever as slaves and bondmen. I have little wonder that such at times break forth with violence. Nay! I have the more that ever they remain quiet like oxen in a paddock awaiting the plowman’s yoke.”