HOW THE MEN OF THE WIGHT WITHSTOOD THE FRENCH THE LAST CHARGE AT ST AUBIN "WE MUST ROW," SAID SIR GEORGE IN THE GLOAMING (missing from source book) *THE CAPTAIN OF THE WIGHT* *CHAPTER I.* *HOW THE GERFALCON SPED.* In front of an old ivy-covered manor house, so built, with its projecting wings, as to form three sides of a quadrangle, a boy was standing, idly leaning his arms on the stone coping of the low wall which shut in the fourth side of the courtyard. The boy was well grown, with fair, ruddy face, and brown hair, cut, after the picturesque fashion of the latter half of the fifteenth century, straight above his eyebrows, but falling in wavy masses on each side of his face. His eyes were bright, and full of life. His strongly-knit frame gave promise of strength and activity, and his age might well have been put at seventeen or eighteen even, so tall was he, and well grown, although, in truth, he was not more than fifteen. The free life in the fresh Hampshire air, blowing from the sea, over forest, gorse-covered common, and well-tilled fields, had given play to his thews and sinews. It was evening. The sun was just setting over the blue hills covered with woods, interspersed with heathy patches. Far as the eye could see, there were gently-swelling undulations, with a loftier hill looming out of the grey mist which rose, film-like, behind the nearer masses of the russet forest. Here and there some larger expanse of mist looked like a lake amid the overhanging trees, while over all brooded the silence of the evening, when all nature pauses in reverence to the setting sun, broken only by the lowing of some distant kine, or the faint hum of a beetle as it went booming by. Suddenly the boy stood up, listened attentively, then, springing through the gateway, he darted down the road in front of the house, to meet a horseman who was riding up the forest glade. The man was singing blithely as he rode, and the refrain of each verse rang merrily in the stillness of the evening. It was the sound of this which had told the boy of the new comer’s approach. "Ringwood, my hound, with a merry taste, All about the green wood began caste, I took my horn and blew him a blast With tro-ro-ro-ro! tro-ro-ro-ro! With hey go bet! hey go bet! ho! There he goeth, there he goeth, there he goe, We shall have sport and game enowe," rang out clear over the wood, and cheerily the boy answered,-- "In sooth, Humphrey, thou’rt in fine voice to-night; but, prythee, cease thy song for a while, and give me the gerfalcon, that I may see her." "Certes, Master Ralph, thou wilt be well pleased anon. ’Tis the veriest sweetest little bird for mounting a heron, or springing a pheasant, as ever I did see. There, stroke her cautiously; see how she manteleth and warbelleth her wings."