"So thou hast busied thyself in securing these dainties for thy mistress, I presume?" "Yes, I have sent one of my trusty shafts after this dainty bird, and I have poked under a few stones in the brook for these trout. Here," said he, throwing his quiver on the floor, "are a score of cloth-yard shafts, and every one a trusty friend, and never fails. I have taken great pains in the rearing of them. I have tried them all at a mark, and I have all their peculiarities logged up in my brain-pan. I have taken the swerve out of them, as nearly as I can, by paring their heads, and twisting their tails; but they have all a mind of their own at the finish. But I know their minds as well as they know themselves, and I can allow, to a shadow, what they require and I can shoot a Norman's eye out at fourscore paces with any of them. Look, also; all these heads have been made by Sweyn, the Sheffield armourer; all of them forked ye see, and make a dainty little slit between a Norman's ribs as they enter; but gramercy! getting them out, there's the rub! I have been watching for many a day down the Gyll, for the Normans have been getting bold, ransacking the forest in quest of Saxon refugees. A slice of luck, and a crumb of comfort, has fallen to me this morning." "Oh! Hast thou had some of them within reach of thy cloth-yard shafts, then, this morning?" "Marry, that I have! and I have tickled one or two of them with a long stick; but they didn't laugh, mark you." "Oh, then, we'll have thy story, Bretwul, for we are all anxious to hear how they like messages from our woodsmen."