“Now here’s a health to Merry England and long life to her honest yeomanry! So long as they guide bolt and shaft as now they’ll confusion bring to all of England’s enemies.” So it befell that in the dusk of that fair day Elbert, the forester, did lead home to Pelham Wood a goodly, milk-white heifer. A proud man was he of this prize of his archery; but, had he known the full tale of the day’s doings, he might have been, without vainglory, prouder still. CHAPTER VI—WOLF’S HEAD GLEN I think that that spring morning whereon Cedric and I set out on the forest road to Coventry was the fairest that ever I have seen. The sun shone gloriously in the open glades and on the moorlands, and white clouds sailed aloft like racing galleons. The bird chorus among the little new leaves overhead was as the mingled music of harps and lutes and voices in the choir at Shrewsbury, and flowerets of blue and pink and gold full gallantly bedecked the pathside and the brown forest floor. Withal ’twas not a day for idleness and dreaming, for a chill air breathed in the darker vales, and here and there in the deep woodlands and on northern slopes a graying patch of snow yet lingered. Old William, a faithful archer of Mountjoy, rode with us as guide and counsellor—this by the insistence of my father, Lord Mountjoy, who had a sorry lack of faith in the judgment and discretion of what he called “two half-broke colts” like Cedric and me. “I know full well,” he had said when I broached the plan of riding the ten leagues to Coventry to pay due respects to our kinsfolk of Montmorency,—“that Cedric hath a wondrous skill and quickness with his cross-bow, and that thou, Dickon, in thy sword-play, art not far behind many a man that calls himself knight and soldier. You will be mounted well; and mayhap, if danger beset, can fight or fly, saving whole skins as on that day the Carletons hunted you in the woods of Teramore. But all is not done by eyes and limbs, be they never so keen and skilled. Your veteran of three-score will step softly and dry-shod around the quagmire in which your hair-brained youth of sixteen plunges head and ears.” “Never fear, Father,” I cried, “with William or without, we’ll keep whole skins. These are now full quiet days, and we ride for pleasure, not for brawling.”