"I am the mother of seven sons, in lawful wedlock born; five of whom, and three grandsons, sleep with their fathers, in the kirkyard of Waltheofstow; two, as I believe, yet draw the breath of life, biding God's good time; 'Kenric the Dark,' my second born, and 'Eadwulf the Red,' my youngest. Kenric stands yonder, at the bar; Eadwulf is a wanderer on the moorland." Being cross-examined; "Would she know her sons any where; would she know them apart?" "Know my own sons!" she made answer; "the flesh of my own flesh, the bone of my own bone! By day or by night, in darkness or in light, by the lowest sound of the voice, by the least pressure of the hand, by the feeling of their hair, or the smell of their breath, would I know them, and know them apart, any where. Yon is Kenric, and Kenric is no more like to Eadwulf, than day is to darkness, or a bright summer sunshine to a thunder-cloud in autumn." "Call Aradas de Ratcliffe." He, being sworn, was asked; "Know you the person at the bar; and, if ay, what is his name?" "I know him well; his name is Kenric; his condition, so far as I know, a freeman, and verdurer to Sir Yvo de Taillebois." "When did you see him first, to know him?" "In July last, when my Lord of Taillebois returned from Yorkshire, and brought him along in his train." "Have you seen him in the mean time; and, if ay, how often." "Almost daily. He is one of our best foresters, and we rarely hunt or hawk without him." "Can you name any one day, in particular, when you saw the person at the bar, between July and October, to know him?" "I can. On the 12th day of last September, at eight o'clock in the evening, we being then at supper, Kenric came into the hall, by permission, to bring tidings that he had tracked the great mouse-colored hart-royal, which has been known in the dales this hundred years, into a deep dingle at the head of Yewdale, and that he was laid up for the night. On the 13th, we were astir before day, and Kenric led us to the lair; and we hunted that hart all day long on the 13th, and killed him at sunset on the skirts of Skiddaw. We had to pass the night on the mountain, and I well remember how Kenric was the best man in collecting firing and making all things comfortable for the night, it being cold, and a keen white frost." Being cross-examined--"I know it was on the 12th that he brought the tidings, because my rents fall due on that day at Rydal Manor, and I had ridden over to collect them, and returned home somewhat late for supper, and had just sat down to table, very hungry, when he came in with the news of the great hart-royal; and that spoiled my supper, for the thought of killing that hart on the morrow took away all my appetite." "And did you kill him, sir?" asked Sir Ranulf de Glanville from the bench, eagerly; for if he were famous as a lawyer, he was little less so as a woodman. "With a cloth-yard shaft from my own bow, Sir Ranulf, at twenty score yards and thirteen."