“Never can life be more to me than the way to him,” said the lonely boy; “and I—never like him—shall miss the road without him.”
While he thus spoke in the listless dejection of sorrow and weakness, Hatto’s aged step was on the stair. “Gracious lady,” he said, “here is a huntsman bewildered in the hills, who has been asking shelter from the storm that is drifting up.”
“See to his entertainment, then, Hatto,” said the lady.
“My lady—Sir Baron,” added Hatto, “I had not come up but that this guest seems scarce gear for us below. He is none of the foresters of our tract. His hair is perfumed, his shirt is fine holland, his buff suit is of softest skin, his baldric has a jewelled clasp, and his arblast! It would do my lord baron’s heart good only to cast eyes on the perfect make of that arblast! He has a lordly tread, and a stately presence, and, though he has a free tongue, and made friends with us as he dried his garments, he asked after my lord like his equal.”
“O mother, must you play the chatelaine?” asked Ebbo. “Who can the fellow be? Why did none ever so come when they would have been more welcome?”
“Welcomed must he be,” said Christina, rising, “and thy state shall be my excuse for not tarrying longer with him than may be needful.”
Yet, though shrinking from a stranger’s face, she was not without hope that the variety might wholesomely rouse her son from his depression, and in effect Ebbo, when left with Hatto, minutely questioned him on the appearance of the stranger, and watched, with much curiosity, for his mother’s return.
“Ebbo mine,” she said, entering, after a long interval, “the knight asks to see thee either after supper, or to-morrow morn.”
“Then a knight he is?”
“Yea, truly, a knight truly in every look and gesture, bearing his head like the leading stag of the herd, and yet right gracious.”