"He follows hard after," answered the king; "perhaps he may have gone to strike a hart in your forest, my good lord. You will not grudge the king's son a head of venison?" "Heaven forbid!" replied the baron. "But there seems some disturbance without there, as if they were bringing in some one who is hurt. Heaven forbid that your son, my liege, should have met any one of my rough foresters." Stephen looked instantly towards the court; but, seeing his son, Prince Eustace, on horseback, and apparently safe, he turned again towards the baron, whose attention had been called in another direction. During the brief time the king's eyes had been turned towards the court, some other persons had been added to the group in the hall; but, ere we proceed to say what brought them thither, we must once more take the wings of imagination, and fly back to the glades of the forest, and to the scenes which had just taken place under their green canopy. Eva, as we have said, had hastened rapidly homeward; and, though the horns sounded hither and thither at no great distance from her, the path she pursued was for some way quite solitary; till at length, secure from being found in the midst of the wild chase with Richard de Lacy, she slackened her pace and walked more slowly, stopping at last entirely, to take breath and gaze around her, at a spot where the road, rounding an angle at the hill, exposed a deep wooded valley below, with a wide, sloping upland on the other side, rising gradually towards her father's castle, the tall keep of which was discernible above the woody scene before her eyes. Along the side of the opposite hill the hunt was sweeping merrily; horsemen and hounds were seen from time to time bursting forth for an instant, and then plunging again among the bushes; and still the cheerful echo of the horns and eager cry of the dogs told which way the chase went, as the quarry led them through a long, mazy course amid its native woods. Eva gazed, and saw them take their way in a direction opposite to that in which her own steps were bent; but, the moment after, she started with surprise, and uttered a faint cry, as two gayly-dressed horsemen dashed forth from the wood close beside her, and one of them, springing from his horse, caught the edge of her mantle with rude familiarity. "Ha! my pretty maiden," he cried, "We have been hunting the hart and caught the hind, ha? Back with your hood! back with your hood! We three foresters let no deer escape us. On my soul, Eustace, this is no pitiful prize! Thank my lucky stars, that gave you the first choice and the miller's maiden, and threw this pretty creature as the prize of the second chance."