“Up with thee, Egbert! Thou’rt a freeman now, and should do utter homage to none but God. And there’s work to do if thou wilt keep thy freedom. Thou must be far away from Gilroy before another morn.” Egbert, among his sobs of joy, could say no word. I found in my pouch a little purse of gold and gave it him. “Thou’lt need to buy thy food and lodging as a traveler,” I said, “and not be taken as a prowling varlet. Look to it now.” Then he that had been our prisoner found voice at last and began to murmur broken words of thanks and to encumber his new found liberty with oaths of lifelong fealty to ourselves. But Cedric again checked him with uplifted hand. “Hark!” he whispered, “what was that sound?” For a moment all three of us stood silent and breathless, listening to the wind in the branches without and the faint snapping of coals on the hearth. Then came the noise again,—a long drawn, baying howl of a hound on a scent. “Some of our neighbors hunt the deer,” I said. “Nay,” answered Cedric quickly, “’tis no deer-hound. ’Tis a far deeper note.” Meanwhile the face of Egbert had turned an ashen gray, and now his limbs shook with very terror. “’Tis the bloodhounds of Gilroy,” he gasped. “My lord ever keeps two or three for just such use as this. They follow on my track.” Then from a window we saw, a furlong off in the open wood, two huge brown hounds that ran with noses close to earth and upon a path that led straight toward the lodge. Cedric seized his cross-bow again from Egbert’s hands. “Get thee back within,” he commanded, “I will soon stop the coursing of these blood beasts.” Egbert leaped through the door again to the inner room; and Cedric, throwing wide the shutter, was taking aim at the foremost of the hounds when I cried out from behind him: “Hold! Hold! It is too late. There come the horsemen.” From another point in the wood, not far from where the dogs had emerged, there were now riding toward us half a dozen mounted men. Cedric withdrew his weapon; and we gazed upon them in utter dismay. Lord Gilroy and Sir Philip Carrington were in the lead, and after them came three or four stout foresters and last of all, upon an ambling palfrey, none other than Simon, the dogmaster, with his head bound round and round with a great white cloth. Cedric put away his bow, and, unbarring the door of the lodge, stood on the step without, spurning away the hounds that sought to enter. “Good morrow, gentlemen!” he called, full jovially. “Good morrow, gentlemen _both_,” answered Lord Gilroy with a most wicked laugh. “Your hunting does not prosper,” said Cedric, paying no heed to the affront conveyed in Gilroy’s sneering words. “How not?” “Why, it would seem that your hounds have picked up our trail to the lodge here in place of that of their proper quarry, as the best of dogs will do at times.”