“Return thou to the Lord Constable with Mountjoy’s compliments; and say that within the half hour six good cross-bow men will set forth from here, and will o’ertake him on the road long before he reaches DeLancey Manor.” The messenger bowed and withdrew. Soon we heard his horse’s hoofs on the drawbridge. Then Lord Mountjoy sent for one of the older of the Mountjoy archers from the court-yard below, and gave to him the commission just refused by my obstinate squire. This accomplished he turned again to Cedric, with a heavy frown on his brow, and said: “Now tell us, if thou wilt, sirrah, why this sudden showing of the white feather. ’Tis not like thee, I’ll be bound, to shrink from any fray, whether with knight or clown, or to shame me as thou hast before the Constable’s messenger. What terrifies thee now in the thought of this rabble?” “I have no fright of them, my lord. Rather I wist not to have any hand in their punishment for a deed which, lawless though it be, still had the sorest provoking.” Lord Mountjoy gazed at the youth in amazement. My mother and I caught our breaths and one or the other of us would have interposed a word to blunt the edge of such wild-flung talk; but my father burst out again, and in a voice that echoed through the house: “And would’st thou then let the murderers of my friend go free of punishment for that he had struck down a churl that refused him entrance to a house on his own domain?” “The man did but defend his right,” returned the Forester, steadily. “The house was his, against all comers, e’en his liege lord, till he had been duly dispossessed.” Such rebel doctrine had ne’er before been heard in Mountjoy Hall. ’Twas little wonder that my father’s face grew purple with wrath as he shouted: “And where gettest thou such Jack Clown law as that? Is it from the books of chronicles thou hast learned to pore over by the hour, or from the monks at Kirkwald that lend them to thee?” “Nay, my lord, ’tis from the ancient Saxon law that ne’er hath been abrogated in England, though many a time o’erridden. ‘A freeman’s house is his sole domain though it be no more than a forester’s cot.’” Lord Mountjoy had risen and now stamped back and forth. “Ne’er abrogated, forsooth! But it well should be. This is no law or custom for the descendants of the nobles that landed with William the Conqueror. ’Tis of a piece with the insolence of the churls on Grimsby’s lands, who would have a magistrate of their own choosing forsooth, to try their causes withal—reaching up to snatch the reins of governing from their lawful masters. What do such clowns know of law or governing? When did ever such make shift to guide or protect a state?” “Those same chronicles, my lord, of which you spoke but now, tell us of a republic of Rome, where commoners ruled the city, and that that city grew so great in power as to rule half the world and more.”