He hunted a good deal, and, I very much fear, as Rowena rightly remarked, that he might have an excuse for being absent from home.

He began to like wine, too, who had been as sober as a hermit; and when he came back from Athelstane's (whither he would repair not unfrequently), the unsteadiness of his gait and the unnatural brilliancy of his eye were remarked by his lady: who, you may be sure, was sitting up for him.

As for Athelstane, he swore by St.Wullstan that he was glad to have escaped a marriage with such a pattern of propriety; and honest Cedric the Saxon (who had been very speedily driven out of his daughter-in-law's castle) vowed by St.Waltheof that his son had bought a dear bargain.
So Sir Wilfrid of Ivanhoe became almost as tired of England as his royal master Richard was, (who always quitted the country when he had squeezed from his loyal nobles, commons, clergy, and Jews, all the money which he could get,) and when the lion-hearted Prince began to make war against the French King, in Normandy and Guienne, Sir Wilfrid pined like a true servant to be in company of the good champion, alongside of whom he had shivered so many lances, and dealt such woundy blows of sword and battle-axe on the plains of Jaffa or the breaches of Acre.

Travellers were welcome at Rotherwood that brought news from the camp of the good King: and I warrant me that the knight listened with all his might when Father Drono, the chaplain, read in the St.James's Chronykyll (which was the paper of news he of Ivanhoe took in) of "another glorious triumph"-- "Defeat of the French near Blois"-- "Splendid victory at Epte, and narrow escape of the French King:" the which deeds of arms the learned scribes had to narrate.
However such tales might excite him during the reading, they left the Knight of Ivanhoe only the more melancholy after listening: and the more moody as he sat in his great hall silently draining his Gascony wine.
Silently sat he and looked at his coats-of-mail hanging vacant on the wall, his banner covered with spider-webs, and his sword and axe rusting there.

"Ah, dear axe," sighed he (into his drinking-horn)--"ah, gentle steel! that was a merry time when I sent thee crashing into the pate of the Emir Abdul Melik as he rode on the right of Saladin.