THE TWO BEGIN THEIR JOURNEY CHAPTER II. WATCHWORDS CHAPTER III. CAST ON THE WORLD CHAPTER IV. WHAT CAME OF SELF-WILL CHAPTER V. A CHANGE IN ROGER’S DESTINY CHAPTER VI. FAIR AND FICKLE CHAPTER VII. ROGER HAS HIS WISH CHAPTER VIII. MISCALCULATION CHAPTER IX. ROGER FINDS HIS MISSION CHAPTER X. MARCUS CURTIUS CHAPTER XI. HOME TO USK CHAPTER XII. LAWRENCE’S REWARD HISTORICAL APPENDIX *THE LORD OF THE MARCHES.* *CHAPTER I.* *THE TWO BEGIN THEIR JOURNEY.* "O guide me through this life’s uncertain wild! And for aught else beneath the circling sun, So Thou in Thine own bosom keep Thy child, Father! Thy will be done!" That every baby enters the world with a spoon of some metal in its mouth, is an old saying which is easy of interpretation. And in the ancient town of Usk, in Monmouthshire, on the first day of September, 1373, were born two babies, not many yards apart, whose spoons were made of exceedingly diverse metal. The baby who was born in the morning of that day, in the Castle of Usk, brought with him a spoon of gold, beautifully embossed, and exquisite in shape. He found the world—as represented by the mantle in which his nurse enveloped him—soft, rich, velvety, and fur-lined. If he cried, the sound won immediate attention; and the faintest sign of illness on his part struck despair into hearts which beat with the bluest blood. The baby who was born in the evening, in a squalid mud hovel, one of a dozen which nestled close under the Castle wall, was accompanied by a battered old spoon of the very rustiest iron. His world was a sheepskin, extremely dirty, and not particularly fragrant. His cries were answered—when they were answered—by a rough toss in the arms of his eldest sister, a slipshod, shock-headed girl of eleven years; and the possibility of his early death neither dismayed nor grieved any one, for even his mother was of opinion that he was one too many in the hovel, which could scarcely find room for the nine persons who occupied it.