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the eye. “It was a good fight,” he said, and smiled. “Courage and honour will carry a man far.”

He then looked away across his wide acres to the distant village. For a while he was lost in revery and the others waited for him, but he came to himself with a start and turned brusquely, though not unkindly, to Philip Marsham.

‘‘Come now, begone, you vagabond cockerel! If a farm is robbed from here to the Channel, or a hundred miles the other way, I’ll rear the county upon your track and scour the countryside from the Severn to the Thames. I ’ll publish the tale of you the country over and see you hanged when they net you.”

He stood there looking very fierce as he spoke, but there was a laugh in his eyes, and when Phil turned to go, he flung the lad a silver coin.

Phil saw the gesture and picked the money from the air, for he was quick with his fingers, but before he caught it Sir John seemed to have forgotten him; for he bent his head and walked away with his eyes on the ground. There was something in the knight’s manner that stung the lad, who looked at the coin in his hand and almost as quick as thought hurled it back at Sir John.

“How now?” cried Sir John, turning about.

“I’ll take no money that is thrown me,” Phil replied.

“So!” Sir John stood looking at him. ‘‘I have a liking for thee,’’ he said, and smiled. But he then, it seemed, again forgot that there was such a lad, for he once more bent his head and walked away with the lady who had stood above them in the wood.

As for Phil, he did not so lightly forget Sir John. He