Why would no one explain such things to him? Nay, what a pity everyone treated it as mere childish folly in him to be thus interested! They did not quite dare to beat him for it--that was one use of being a baron. Indeed, one day when Simon Bunce struck him sharply and hard over the shoulders for dragging home a great piece of sea-weed with numerous curious creatures upon it, Goodwife Dolly rushed out and made such an outcry that the esquire was fain to excuse himself by declaring that it was time that my lord should know how to bide a buffet, and answer it. He was ready and glad to meet the stroke in return! ‘Come on, sir!’ And Hob put a stout headless lance in the boy’s hand, while Simon stood up straight before him. Hob adjusted the weapon in his inert hand, and told him how and where to strike. But ‘It is not in sooth. I don’t want to hurt Master Simon,’ said the child, as they laughed, and yet with displeasure as his blow fell weak and uncertain. ‘Is it a mouse’s tail?’ cried Simon in derision. ‘Come, sir, try again,’ said Hob. ‘Strike as you did when the black bull came down. Why cannot you do the like now, when you are tingling from Bunce’s stroke?’ ‘Ah! then I thought the bull would fall on Piers,’ said Hal. ‘Come on, think so now, sir. One blow to do my heart good, and show you have the arm of your forebears.’ Thus incited, with Hob calling out to him to take heart of grace, while Simon made a feint of trying to beat Mother Dolly, Hal started forward and dealt a blow sufficient to make Simon cry out, ‘Ha, well struck, sir, if you had had a better grip of your lance! I even feel it through my buff coat.’ He spoke as though it had been a kiss; but oh! and alack! why were these rough and dreary exercises all that these guardians--yea, and even Sir Lancelot and his mother--thought worth his learning, when there was so much more that awoke his delight and interest? Was it really childish to heed these things? Yet even to his young, undeveloped brain it seemed as if there must be mysteries in sky and sea, the unravelling of which would make life more worth having than the giving and taking of blows, which was all they heeded. CHAPTER VIII. -- THE HERMIT No hermit e’er so welcome crost A child’s lone path in woodland lost. --KEBLE. Hal had wandered farther than his wont, rather hoping to be out of call if Simon arrived to give him a lesson in chivalrous sports. He found himself on the slope of one of the gorges down which smaller streams rushed in wet weather to join the Derwent. There was a sound of tinkling water, and leaning forward, Hal saw that a tiny thread of water dropped between the ferns and the stones. Therewith a low, soft chant in a manly voice, mingling with the drip of the water. The words were strange to him&& Lucis Creator optime, Lucem dierum proferens&&