A long, keen bugle-blast rang from the keep, and in an instant a hundred bows were strung, a hundred ready feet were in the stirrup. Again if rang, longer and keener than before, and every forester was in his saddle; while from the low-browed arch, bending their stately heads quite to their saddle-bows, over the echoing drawbridge a dozen knights rode forth, the followers and comrades of their king. Scarcely above the middle size, but moulded in most exquisite proportion, thin-flanked, deep-chested, muscular, and lithe, and agile, there was not one of all his train, noble, or squire, or yeoman, who could display a form so fitted for the union of activity with strength, of beauty with endurance, as could the second William. His hair, from which he had derived his famous soubriquet, was not of that marked and uncomely hue which we should now term red, but rather of a bright and yellowish brown, curled closely to a classical and bust-like head; his eye was quick and piercing; his features, severally, were well formed and handsome; yet had the eye a wavering, and restless, and at times even downcast expression; and the whole aspect of the face told many a tale of pride, and jealousy, and passion--suspicion that might be roused to cruelty, and wilfulness that surely would be lashed by any opposition to violent and reckless fury. But now the furrows on the brow were all relaxed, the harsh lines of the mouth smoothed into temporary blandness. “Forward, messires!” he cried, in Norman-French; “the morning finds us sluggards. What, ho! Sir Walter Tyrrel, shall we two company to-day, and gage our luck against these gay gallants?” “Right jovially, my liege,” returned the knight whom he addressed. A tall, dark-featured soldier rode beside his bridle-rein, bearing a bow which not an archer in the train could bend. “Right jovially will we--an’ they dare cope with us! What sayest thou, De Beauchamp--darest thou wager thy black boar-hound against a cast of merlins--thyself and Vermandois against his grace and me?” “Nay, thou shouldst gage him odds, my Walter,” Rufus interposed; “thy shaft flies ever truest, nor yield I to any bow save thine!” “To his, my liege?” cried Beauchamp, “thou yield to his! Never drew Walter Tyrrel so true a string as thou; he lacks the sleight, I trow, so ekes it out with strength! Tyrrel must hold him pleased if he rate second i’ the field.” “How now, Sir Walter?” shouted the king; “hearest thou this bold De Beauchamp, and wilt thou yield the bucklers?--not thou, I warrant me, though it be to thy king!” “So please your highness,” Tyrrel answered; “’tis but a sleight to ’scape our wager--’scaping the shame beside of yielding! He deems us over-strong for him, and so would part us!”