"No, no," replied the man; "you must go back. You should have taken the first turning on your left. Lord, now! only to think of your not knowing your way to Monington Chapel!"
"What's the hour?" asked Hugh.
"Just mid-day," answered the man. "Don't you see the sun?"
"Then there is time," said Hugh de Monthermer; and mounting the servant's horse, he retrod his steps for some distance.
Just as he was approaching the turning, however, which the man had directed him to take, he heard a loud whistling scream, which made him look up to the sky, thinking that some eagle--a bird then very common in the marches of Wales--had come close above his head. But nothing of the kind was to be seen; and a moment after the same cry was repeated, while one of the servants who were riding a little way behind, exclaimed, "It is the dwarf, my lord, it is Tangel. See where he comes at full speed, like a monkey on a race-horse!"
Hugh de Monthermer paused for a moment and turned his eyes down the road from Hereford, up which the dwarf was coming, not mounted on his forest pony, but perched upon the back of a tall charger with his head just seen between the ears of the animal, his long arms stretched out holding the bridle somewhat short, and his equally lengthy legs hanging down, affording no bad type for the old figure of Nobody.
The boy was speedily by Hugh de Monthermer's side, shaking his head reproachfully as he came, and saying, "Ay, you would not listen to Tangel, man-at-arms. Nobody listens to Tangel; and why? Because he has not got a skin like a sucking pig and a face such as boys cut out of a turnip. Now, if any of these bottle-nosed beer drinkers had told you to stay and listen, you would have waited by the hour."
"Not I," replied Hugh de Monthermer, "nor can I wait now, good Tangel; so come on, and make haste with your story by the way. What is it you want to tell me?"
"Ay, haste, haste!" cried Tangel, turning his horse and keeping by the side of the young lord; "always hasting to destruction, and slow to anything good. Now are you riding out here, without knowing where you are going or who it is that has sent for you."
"And pray, if you are wiser, Tangel," said Hugh, with a smile, "let me know where it is I am going to, and who it is that has sent for me."