Dickon bent his chin upon his throat to overlook the device stitched upon his breast, but did not reply. A formless idea crossed his brain that perchance one might live in forests without a lord. It was worth thinking upon. "And by what mercy camest thou at my heels?" the lad pursued. Then, as these words brought up before him the awful scene at the woodland's edge, he fell to shuddering and choked with sobs. "My good old master,--to die thus foully,--oh, woe! woe!" he moaned, and put down his head again. Dickon pricked up his ears at the word. "Had you then a master, too?" he asked, and on the instant there sprouted in his heart a kindlier feeling for the lad. They were more of a common clay, it seemed, than he had thought. "But you have no badge!" he commented. "Badge? Badge?" the boy said hesitatingly, and Dickon noted now a strangeness of sound in his speech which, the while he had held him to be of rank, had passed unheard. "What means it--badge?" asked the lad; and when Dickon pointed to the two hares on his own breast, the stranger burst again into laughter. A droll boy this, surely, who could be so merry and so tearful all in the same breath. "Nay, I wear no mans collar," he said at last; and then, in pity for Dickon's perplexity, explained. "The good old man, Geraldus Hansenius, was my master only in love and courtesy, and in that he taught me in all the deep mysteries of his craft. "He brought me from my own land, and here, where Sir John gave us honor and fair lodgment, we printed the book. And now, lo! in this short hour Sir John and Geraldus are foully done to death, and Camber Dane is despoiled--and the Troilus and I are hiding for our lives, like hares in a thicket. Ach Gott! Ach Gott!" At this there were more moans. "No hare am I," said Dickon, stoutly, "but if they try me, more like a wolf. Pick me out these threads." He knelt beside the lad, who with a bodkin from his doublet ripped one by one the hated lines that had shown Dickon to be evil Sir Watty's man. Then Dickon stood upright, and filled himself with a great, deep breath. The new sense of liberty seemed to raise his stature and swell his girth. He took off his iron sallet, and shook his free head proudly, nearer to the sky than it had ever before been lifted. "We will live in the greenwood," he said in bold, boyish confidence. CHAPTER III. A STRANGE CHRISTMAS EVE. When two nights and two days had passed, Dickon and Andreas found themselves on the furthermost edge of the forest. Here skirted the woodland a highroad which neither had seen before. Beyond this were a rolling moor country and distant mountains, the sight of which was strange to them; but house of any kind there was none. When their eager gaze, sweeping all the prospect, had made certain that no habitation was to be seen, Dickon groaned deeply, and little Andreas wept outright.