“Thou hast been daring peril again!” said the Princess, holding her husband’s arm, and looking up into his face with lovingly reproachful yet exulting eyes. “Yet I will not be troubled! Naught is danger to thee! And yet alone and unarmed to encounter such a sturdy savage as I see yonder! But there is blood on his brow! Let his hurt be looked to ere we speak of his fate.” “He is at thy disposal, mi Dona,” returned Edward: “thou art the judge of both, and shall decide their lot when thou hast heard their tale.” “It can scarce be a very dark one,” replied Eleanor, “or thou wouldst never have led them to such a judge!” Then turning to the prisoners, she began to say in her foreign English, “Follow the good father, friends—” when she broke off at fuller sight of the boy’s countenance, and exclaimed in Provençal, “I know the like of that face and mien!” “Truly dost thou know it,” her husband replied; “but peace till thou hast cleared thy present court, and we can be private.—Follow the priest,” he added, “and await the Princess’s pleasure.” They obeyed; and the priest led them through a side-door, through which they could still hear Eleanor’s sweet Castillian voice laying before her husband her difficulties in comprehending her various petitioners. The priest being English, was hardly more easily understood than his flock; and her lady spoke little but _langue d’oui_, the Northern French, which was as little serviceable in dealing with her Spanish and Provençal as with the rude West-Saxon-English. Edward’s deep manly tones were to be heard, however, now interrogating the peasants in their own tongue, now briefly interpreting to his wife in Provençal; and a listener could easily gather that his hand was as bounteous, his heart as merciful, as hers, save where attacks on the royal game had been requited by the trouble complained of; and that in such cases she pleaded in vain.