crippled hand was clenched and outstretched in feeble menace or warning. The monk read those signs of passion aright. He guessed how the memory of the broad acres, sacrificed utterly in vain, was rankling then; and felt his priestcraft powerless to grapple with the thwarted devil of avarice that glared out of those bloodshot eyes; so, with scant ceremony or excuse, he departed out of the evil Presence like a baffled exorcist; leaving the chapellan of Bever to deal with the grisly penitent.

So died Sir Giles Dynevor-scarcely in the odour of sanctity. Nevertheless, his bones were laid with great reverence and honour under the chancel at Haultvaux; and over them was built, at the sole charge of the House, a stately tomb of Sienna marble, bearing the effigy of that good knight with hands duly folded in prayer; whereon, till the eighth Henry made havoc with the Abbey and all appertaining thereto, might have been read an epitaph in fair monkish Latin, of the which the last two versicles may serve for an ensample :

Marte: ferox in : pace : sagar : hnic: ille : sacello

E: pietate: sua: munera: larga: dedit.

CHAPTER IV.

THE BREEDING OF THE BASTARD.

THE heir of Bever bore the loss of his father, and his own accession to the family honours, with singular calmness, not to say indifference. Neither did it seem likely, that his house would be much advanced by his care for its honour and dignity. But, in truth, had Simon been endowed with all the energy and ambition of his sire, both must needs have been cramped by the unhappy disaster which befel him, before he had been three full years in possession of his inheritance. Returning home one frosty evening, his horse floundered on the slippery stones before the barbican; and Dynevor was carried in with a broken thigh, and hip so sorely strained, that a better chirurgeon than the unskilful leech who tended him, would scarce have saved the patient from halting thenceforth. Whilst still in the spring of life, he was cut off from all share in the wars and sports of his peers; for neither in tourney, chase, nor melée, can place be found for one who may not sit saddle-fast. From courtly pageant or pastime, he was yet more estranged, for out of such metal never was moulded squire of dames.

The bearing of that heavy cross might perchance have warped a kindlier and more patient nature; so 'tis no marvel if Dynevor grew up to middle age, a soured and morose man-not absolutely a domestic tyrant or brutal despot; yet over apt to vent his evil tempers in a slow, sardonic fashion, on such as were bound to endure them.

Some short while before his mishap, Simon Dynevor had sent sufficiently courteous messages to Ralph Warenne's surviving sister; thanking her for her charitable care, and proffering thenceforward to take the child in charge. To this Dame Margaret assented very readily: she was left something straitened in means, and had no mind to keep needless encumbrances. So the little Ralph was brought home to Bever, along with Gillian, his foster-mother; whose husband was slain, hard by his lord, in that night surprise on the banks of Wear. The same Gillian was very comely to look upon, and still in her early prime by the time her nursling could be trusted alone, she was married again to one of Dynevor's foresters, and settled in a cottage of her own, some few bowshots from the castle.

In that cottage Ralph Fitzwarenne (thus the boy, by the will of his dead godfather, had been christened) spent much of his early boyhood.

The conscience of Simon Dynevor seems to have been satisfied so soon as his son was fairly in his charge; and, after that one act of grace, the meanest of his household was not treated with more utter neglect. While she lived, Dame Alice Dynevor showed no small kindness to the child; for she had liked his mother well, in her own staid austere way, and-despite her belief in the deceased Sir Oliver's sagacity, and her reverence for Holy Church's behest-she could not but fear that Maude had been hardly dealt with. Neither could she ever wholly put aside certain vague self-reproaches for negligence, in not having stood more heedfully betwixt the dead and her own son. She did her best to instruct the boy in such simple lore as she herself had attained: but she could scarcely spell over her own missal; whilst monkish legends made up her History. To these long-winded discourses Ralph would sit listening gravely for hours, never once indulging in a yawn of weariness. In those days he was too grateful for any loving word or look, not to be ready to repay such by harder self-denial than this. The orphan-for such in very truth he was-had one other ally at Bever.

Rheumatism and many old wounds had so far told on Philip Kemeys, as to make him more fit for home service than foreign wars; though

betwixt the pains that ever and anon crippled him, he could wield axe, or sword, or lance, as starkly as of yore. The ancient esquire, from the day when at his dead master's bidding he carried that message to Maude Warenne, had been possessed of a vague remorse-the more strange, because his conscience carried, with much ease and comfort, the burthen of many seemingly blacker deeds. He never told this to his confessor, and, perchance, never allowed it to himself. But, if Ralph had been his own son, he could not have ministered more sedulously to his caprices, or trained him more carefully in each manly sport and martial exercise for which he himself was renowned.

Before the boy was sixteen, he was left once more utterly lonely; for, in the same winter, the devout lady and the godless old soudard went to their several accounts; and their pupil regretted the sinner, far more than he did the saint.

Some three years earlier, a great change had come over Bever. Though Sir Simon Dynevor cared little for the advancement of his house, he knew that it behoved him to wive again, if only to purvey himself with heirs-male. His choice fell on the Lady Ursula Montacute -a damsel neither fair, young, nor richly dowered; but of morals unimpeached, and stainless descent-the sister of a neighbouring baron.

The Lady Ursula was born with a quick temper and shrewish tongue; and long waiting for tardy wooers, had helped to sour the one and sharpen the other. She chose to rule her new household less by love than by fear-being careful only to never thwart her sullen lord. Ralph Fitzwarenne, for reasons not hard to guess, she held in special aversion, and lost no chance of stinging him with bitter words, or of bringing him under his father's displeasure: twice or thrice she caused the boy to be severely scourged by the castle chapellan; for Sir Simon himself never laid his hand upon the boy in anger. marriage days, she ventured to hint that his very presence and maintenance in the castle was a grievous insult to herself; but she was bidden to "hold her peace, and not presume to meddle;" whilst an ominous look from under her husband's brows warned her she had gone too far. She broached that matter no more.

Once, in early

But Ralph was wondrously hard and stubborn. Of taunts, or reproofs, or stripes, he took no more heed than of an April shower: if he was chary of smiles, and seldom laughed aloud, neither man nor woman since his early childhood had heard him wail or seen him weep. When the chiding or chastisement was over, he would betake himself straight to the cottage of his foster-mother, and bide there till curfew.

Even to her he made no complaint; only at such times he was most eager to hear the only story of which he never wearied-the story of his dead mother and her wrongs. As he listened to the simple talevaried only by some trifling incident, that most would have thought not worth recording-the boy's face, that had never changed during his own punishment, would lower and darken strangely. His big brown eyes would gleam with a malignant fire, and there broke from his lips certain muttered words that made Gillian cross herself, and aver that she would speak of these things no more. But she did speak of them again and again, and thus, unwittingly, kept alive the embers of a bitter enmity.

So the years went by, till Ralph grew into a tall sinewy youth, overtopping his sire by a full head, and looking gigantic beside the puny fractious urchin, the sole issue of the second marriage.

Sir Simon's bearing towards his firstborn was somewhat perverse and inconsistent. He rather encouraged than otherwise the pursuit of those bodily exercises, in which the youth showed already a rare excellence. Ralph had always horse and hound ready to his hand, and coin enough to enable him to mingle, after a modest fashion, in the amusements of the country-side. But, when Dynevor sent forth his vassals to war, under command of the Lord Montacute, his brother-inlaw, Ralph was constrained to tarry at home, and practise at the quintain with blunted lance, while his comrades were shivering grinded spears. How he chafed under such idlesse-how his spirit burned within him when, in the long winter evenings, youths not older than himself boasted or jested of what they had done in spring or summer beyond the narrow seas-how the flaunt of banner, the sound of trumpet, and the rattle of steel, haunted his waking and sleeping dreamsmay be more easily conceived than told. But he was too proud and stubborn ever to require the reason of his father's caprice-much less to pray him to change it. It may well be that Sir Simon only waited to be entreated: but he waited in vain. So betwixt these two ripened day by day an evil crop of distrust and discontent, and the harvest-time could not be long a-coming.

All this while the wars were waging in Flanders and Normandy with varying fortunes; till at last the heart of broad England leaped up as the heart of one man at the news of Creçy; when grinding taxes, rough exactions, and broken promises were all forgotten in the first great success of the brave, patient king. In the same autumn, too, was won a notable victory; the like whereof hath seldom been seen

since on Rephidim the Lawgiver's hands were stayed up, till Amalek was smitten hip and thigh about the going down of the sun. Nor is it wonder if at Neville's Cross, where queen and noble, knight and yeoman, gained large store of honour, to the Church militant was given the chiefest share. For, to sound of matin song, chanted from Durham tower, the armies were set in array; monk's frock fluttered side by side in the ranks with archer's gipon; and, in the very forefront of the fight gleamed bishop's rochet, though Mowbray, Dacre, and Percy laid their lances in rest.

To the tidings of these feats of arms, when they came in due course to Bever, Ralph Fitzwarenne gave attentive ear. He spoke little at the time; but thenceforward day by day grew more tactiturn and reserved, and withdrew himself from the sports and pastimes in which he had heretofore delighted; going forth alone to hawk or strike a deer; and in all ways rather avoiding than seeking the company of his fellows. The change in the youth's demeanour escaped not Sir Simon Dynevor; and his sharp, suspicious glance dwelt more often than was its wont on his son's face, while the other's eyes would flash back something akin to defiance. So through winter and early spring the pair lay watching each other; like wary commanders, each within his own entrenchment, waiting, perchance, the opportunity to make sally.

CHAPTER V.

AN HAGARENE.

EARLY on a breezy March day Sir Simon Dynevor sat in his judgmentseat a huge arm-chair, drawn into the embrasure of a window looking westward from the dais of his hall. Close to his shoulder stood the Lady Ursula-shrill and voluble in accusation--clasping to her side a sallow, hard-featured boy, some ten years old, the very image of herself, whose grief was yet more clamorous than her own invective. Only two others were in presence-the chapellan of the castle and Ralph Fitzwarenne.

Whilst the lady's eloquence was in full tide, her husband raised his hand impatiently:

"I prithee hush, ma mie; thou art too distempered to tell thy tale. And, Oliver, still that fool's tongue, or thou shalt have good cause for