"How mean you, my lord?" said the astonished menial.
"Didst ever hold stirrup for a fisher's son?"
"No, my lord!"
"Thou liest. For thou hast but now done so. Your lord has found out that he is but a fisher-woman's brat; and a fisher's brat is about to find out that he is a lord."
"You speak in riddles, my lord."
"Set thy wits, and those of yonder gaping fellows, to work to unriddle them," was the reply of the degraded youth as he buried his spurs deep in his horse's flanks. "Give the compliments of the son of Hurtel of the Red-Hand to your new lord, knaves, and say he has taken the liberty to borrow his hunter for a time!" he cried, turning round in the saddle as he rode off.
The next moment he dashed across the drawbridge and disappeared in the twilight gloom of the forest, leaving the wonder-stricken retainers to pick the kernel from the difficult nut he had left them to crack; and, by putting their sage heads together, with the aid of some expressions dropped by the frantic Lady Lester, they were not long in arriving at a shrewd guess at the truth.
CHAPTER VI.
"Guiltless am I, but bear the penalty!"