Alleyne doffed hat and bowed head at the sight of him, but the serf folded his hands and leaned them upon his cudgel, looking with little love at the knot of nobles and knights-in-waiting who rode behind the king.
"Ha!" cried Edward, reining up for an instant his powerful black steed.
"Le cerf est passe?
Non?
Ici, Brocas; tu parles Anglais." "The deer, clowns ?" said a hard-visaged, swarthy-faced man, who rode at the king's elbow.

"If ye have headed it back it is as much as your ears are worth." "It passed by the blighted beech there," said Alleyne, pointing, "and the hounds were hard at its heels." "It is well," cried Edward, still speaking in French: for, though he could understand English, he had never learned to express himself in so barbarous and unpolished a tongue.

"By my faith, sirs," he continued, half turning in his saddle to address his escort, "unless my woodcraft is sadly at fault, it is a stag of six tines and the finest that we have roused this journey.

A golden St.Hubert to the man who is the first to sound the mort." He shook his bridle as he spoke, and thundered away, his knights lying low upon their horses and galloping as hard as whip and spur would drive them, in the hope of winning the king's prize.

Away they drove down the long green glade--bay horses, black and gray, riders clad in every shade of velvet, fur, or silk, with glint of brazen horn and flash of knife and spear.