[4] Sir Milo was Sheriff of Gloucester, and was afterwards created Earl of Hereford by the Empress Maude.
[5] Otherwise ceorls and theowes, tenant farmers and labourers, the latter, bondsmen, "adscripti glebæ," bought with the land, but who could not be sold apart from it.
CHAPTER III WHO STRUCK THE STAG?
"It was a stag, a stag of ten,
Bearing his branches sturdily."
We left the grandson of the recluse setting forth in quest of the stag.
Forth he and his dog bounded from the thick covert in which their cottage was concealed, and emerging from the tall reeds which bordered the brook, they stood beneath the shade of the mighty beech-trees, whose trunks upbore the dense foliage, as pillars in the solemn aisles of cathedrals support the superstructure; for the woods were God's first temples, and the inhabitants of such regions drew from them the inspiration from which sprang the various orders of Gothic architecture.
Here Osric, for such was his name, paused and hid in a thicket of hazel, for he spied the stag coming down the glade towards him, he restrained the dog by the leash: and the two lay in ambush.