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Rh there is more reason that your manners should be gentle too. I am well persuaded that you did but jest with this lady, and that you will now permit her to leave your land either alone or with me as a guide, if she should need one, through the wood. As to birth, it does not become me to boast, and there is sooth in what you say as to the unworthiness of clerks, but it is none the less true that I am as well born as you.'

'Dog!' cried the furious Socman, 'there is no man in the south who can say as much.'

'Yet can I,' said Alleyne, smiling; 'for indeed I also am the son of Edric the Socman, of the pure blood of Godfrey the thane, by the only daughter of Aluric of Brockenhurst. Surely, dear brother,' he continued, holding out his hand, 'you have a warmer greeting than this for me. There are but two boughs left upon this old Saxon trunk.'

His elder brother dashed his hand aside with an oath, while an expression of malignant hatred passed over his passion-drawn features. 'You are the young cub of Beaulieu, then?' said he. 'I might have known it by the sleek face and the slavish manner, too monk-ridden and craven in spirit to answer back a rough word. Thy father, shaveling, with all his faults, had a man's heart; and there were few who could look him in the eyes on the day of his anger. But you! Look there, rat, on yonder field where the cows graze, and on that other beyond, and on the orchard hard by the church. Do you know that all these were squeezed out of your dying father by greedy priests, to pay for your upbringing in the cloisters! I, the Socman, am shorn of my lands that you may snivel Latin and eat bread for which you never yet did hand's turn. You rob me first, and now you would come preaching and whining, in search mayhap of another field or two for your priestly friends. Knave! my dogs shall be set upon you; but, meanwhile, stand out of my path, and stop me at your peril!' As he spoke he rushed forward, and throwing the lad to one side, caught the woman's wrist; Alleyne, however, as active as a