Perhaps if Louis from Beyond the Seas had been brought up in France he would have known better the sort of people he had to deal with; but when he was a little child his mother had been forced to fly with him to the court of his grandfather Athelstan, where he had grown up, learning many things, but not much of his subjects, several of whom were far more powerful than he. To these Normans, or Northmen of Danish blood, and to the Bretons, who were akin to the Welsh, the king of France, though nominally their sovereign, was really as much a foreigner as Otho of Germany. _He_ was not going to rule them, and that he would soon find out! So one day they appeared before the palace and demanded their duke, and as he was not given up to them they broke into open revolt, and not only gained possession of Richard, but made Louis himself prisoner. In this manner the tables were turned: Richard was once more duke in his own duchy, and Louis was kept in strict confinement till he swore to Bernard the Dane to restore to Normandy the rights which had been forfeited at Compiègne. But even so the boy's guardians had not learned wisdom, for in spite of what had happened before they were persuaded by Louis on some slight pretext to allow him to carry Richard back to the royal town of Laon, and once there he was instantly placed, with Osmond a Norman noble, under arrest in the tower. By this time, 944, Richard was eleven years old, and the strange life he had led since his father died had ripened him early. On many occasions when his life had been in peril he had shown not only great courage but self-control beyond his age. Danger he delighted in, it only excited him; but in the tower of Laon time hung heavy on his hands, for he was forbidden to go outside the walls, and he was growing weak and languid from want of exercise. Great, therefore, was his delight when one morning at the hour that Louis sat in judgment on the cases brought by his people, his guardian Osmond came to tell him that he had two horses standing at a small gate at the back of the courtyard, and would take him out for a day's hawking. 'How delicious!' cried Richard, springing up out of the deep seat of the window, from which he had been looking longingly over the country. 'Has the king given leave, then, or shall we go without it?' 'Without it,' answered Osmond with rather an odd smile. 'It may not reach his ears, or if it does he can hardly slay us for it.'