"Later, more than a year with a band of holy monks in a desert monastery, high among the rocks; good Fathers who believed in Greek and Latin as surest of all balsams for a wounded spirit, and who made me to become deeply learned in Apostolic writings, and in the teachings of the Church. But, for all their best endeavours, I could not feel called to the perpetual calm of the Cloister. We are a line of fighters and hunters, men to whom pride of race and love of hearth and home, are primal instincts.
"Thus, after many further wanderings and much varying adventure, having by a strange chance heard news of the death of my father, and that my mother mourned. In solitude, the opening of this year found me landed in England—I who, by most, had long been given up for dead; though Martin Goodfellow, failing to find trace of me in Palestine, had gone back to Cumberland, and staunchly maintained his belief that I lived, a captive, and should some day make my escape, and return.
"I passed with all speed to our Castle on the moors, knowing a mother's heart waited here, for mothers never cease to watch and hope. And, sure enough, as I rode up, the great doors flew wide; the house waited its master; the mother was on the threshold to greet her son. Aye! It was good to be at home once more—even in the land where my woman was bearing children to another man.
"We spent a few happy days, I and my mother, together. Then—the joy of hope fulfilled being sometimes a swifter harbinger to another world than the heaviest load of sorrow—she passed, without pain or sickness, smiling, in her sleep; she passed—leaving my home desolate indeed.
"Not having known of my betrothal to thee, because of the old feud between our families, and my reluctance to cross her wish that I should wed Alfrida, thy name was not spoken between us; but I learned from her that my cousin 'Frida lay dying at her manor, nigh to Chester, of some lingering disease contracted in eastern lands."
"With the first stirrings of Spring in forest and pasture, I felt moved to ride south to the Court, and report my return to the King; yet waited, strangely loath to go abroad where any turn of the road might bring me face to face with Humphry. I doubted, should we meet, if I could pass, without slaying him, the man who had stolen my betrothed from me. So I stayed in my own domain, bringing things into order, working in the armoury, and striving by hard exercise to throttle the grim demon of despair.
"April brought a burst of early summer; and, on the first day of May, I set off for Windsor.
"Passing through Carnforth on my way, I found the town keeping high holiday. I asked the reason, and was told of a Tourney now in progress in the neighbourhood, to which the Earl had that morning ridden in state, accompanied by his Countess, who indeed was chosen Queen of Beauty, and was to sit enthroned, attended by her little daughter, two tiny sons acting as pages.
"A sudden mad desire came on me, to look upon thy face again; to see thee with the man who stole thee from me; with the children, who should have been mine own.
"Ten minutes later, I rode on to the field. Pushing in amid the gay crowd, I seemed almost at once to find myself right in front of the throne.