"Not free!" exclaimed both nobles in a breath; and Sir Yvo gazed on him wistfully, as if he but partially understood; but Philip de Morville turned on his heel, superciliously. "Come, Sir Yvo," he said; "it skills not wasting time, or breath, on these abjects. Why, by the light of heaven! had I been fettered in a dungeon, with a ton of iron at my heels, I had leaped head-high to know myself once more a freeman; and here this slave, By 'r lady! I can not brook to speak his name! can not consent, forsooth! can not consent to be free! Heaven's mercy! Let him rot a slave, then! unless, perchance, thou wouldst crave him for thy sake, and the Virgin Mother's sake, to take good counsel and be free. Out on it! out on it! I am sick to the soul at such baseness!" And he left the cottage abruptly, in scorn and anger. But Sir Yvo de Taillebois stood still, gazing compassionately and inquiringly on the man, over whose face there had fallen a dark, gray, death-like shadow, as he lay with his teeth and hands clinched like vices. "Can this be? I thought not that on earth there lived a man who might be free, and would not. Dost not love liberty, Kenric?" "Ask the wild eagle in his place of pride! Ask the wild goat on Pennigant or Ingleborough's head; and when they come down to the cage and chain, believe, then, that I love it not. Freedom! freedom! To be free but five minutes, I would die fifty deaths of direst torture. And yet it can not be--it can not be! Peace, tempter, peace; you can not stir my soul. Slave I was born, slave I must die, and only in the grave shall be a slave no longer. Leave me, beausire; but think me not ungrateful. I never looked to owe so much to living man, and least of all to living man of your proud race, as I owe you to-day. But leave me, noble sir; you can not aid us. So go your way, and leave us to our sorrow, and may the God of serfs and seigneurs be about you with his blessing." "Passing strange! This is passing strange!" said De Taillebois, as he turned to go likewise; "I never saw a beast that would not leave his cage when the door was open."