“Insult _you_, my lady?” howled the steward, suddenly diverging into the maudlin state. “I couldn’t do it. You’re a sweet angel, you are, born and bred; and I love the very ground you tread on; always did. And when I see you thrown away on that snivelling gull----” Whether the miserable sot meant gallantry or gratitude is uncertain. At any rate, utterly forgetting the questions asked him, as well as the presence he sat in, he made a staggering movement to take the Lady Alice’s hand. Failing in the first attempt--the lady, rigid with astonishment, still remaining at his side--he rose, smilingly, to repeat it. Sir Thomas Mowbray gave two strides from his seat, and felled the drunkard to the ground with a well-directed blow on the temples. Master Lambert rolled, apparently lifeless, into the fire-place among the wood-ashes. “You have killed him!” said Lady Alice, not without a grateful glance at her champion. “I am afraid not,” said Mowbray, cruelly enough, it must be admitted; “though, after all, we shall want him alive, to answer a question or two. How now! Sir Hogshead. Must we stave in that wooden head of thine to get anything out of thee?” The young knight administered a ruthless kick to the prostrate steward, which sent that man of wealth rolling into the blazing embers. The kick and the brisk fire roused Master Lambert Reve to something like consciousness and sobriety. He rose upon all fours (the threatening heel of Mowbray, armed with a terrible spur, and raised, from time to time, above his head, forbidding him to adopt a more dignified position), and whimpered out a lament that an honest serving-man should be thus treated after riding, at risk of neck and limb, to apprise his masters of a matter threatening their family honour. “Come to the point,” said Mowbray, raising his heel. “Master Jack, with Tom Simcox, and Will the Tanner’s son, and young Hob Smith, and others, stole a buck this morning. They have been taken by Sir Simon Ballard’s keepers. Sir Simon swears he will have law of all, gentle and simple. They are in the cage at Maldyke,” the steward rattled out, with marvellous clearness and volubility. “So they were the lads we met. Fear nothing, Madam. My young wag shall come to no harm. Where is this Maldyke?” “A league and a half from here, by the road you came.” “Enough. You may get up. Lads, to horse! _Jean, en veux-tu?_” “_De quoi?_” “_Des coups_.” “_Toujours_.” And Maître Jean put away a set of tablets on which he had been making some notes; and pulled on a pair of embroidered gloves, over which he was at great pains to draw on several jewelled rings. These warlike preparations completed, he declared himself--in the French language, and with a charming smile--ready for action. The men-at-arms were soon equipped and mounted. Sir Thomas Mowbray took a hasty farewell of his hostess, saying, as he did so--