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196 'Holà, mon petit!' said Aylward, coming up to where he stood. 'Thou art a squire now, and like enough to win the golden spurs, while I am still the master-bowman, and master-bowman I shall bide. I dare scarce wag my tongue so freely with you as when we tramped together past Wilverley Chase, else I might be your guide now, for indeed I know every house in Bordeaux as a friar knows the beads on his rosary.'

'Nay, Aylward,' said Alleyne, laying his hand upon the sleeve of his companion's frayed jerkin, 'you cannot think me so thrall as to throw aside an old friend because I have had some small share of good fortune. I take it unkind that you should have thought such evil of me.'

'Nay, mon gar. 'Twas but a flight shot to see if the wind blew steady, though I were a rogue to doubt it.'

'Why, had I not met you, Aylward, at the Lyndhurst inn, who can say where I had now been? Certes, I had not gone to Twynham Castle, nor become squire to Sir Nigel, nor met' He paused abruptly and flushed to his hair, but the bowman was too busy with his own thoughts to notice his young companion's embarrassment.

'It was a good hostel, that of the "Pied Merlin,"' remarked Aylward. 'By my ten finger bones! when I hang bow on nail and change my brigandine for a tunic, I might do worse than take over the dame and her business.'

'I thought,' said Alleyne, 'that you were betrothed to some one at Christchurch.'

'To three,' Aylward answered moodily, 'to three. I fear I may not go back to Christchurch. I might chance to see hotter service in Hampshire than I have ever done in Gascony. But mark you now yonder lofty turret in the centre, which stands back from the river and hath a broad banner upon the summit. See the rising sun flashes full upon it and sparkles on the golden lions. 'Tis the royal banner of England, crossed by the prince's label. There he dwells in the Abbey of St. Andrew, where he hath kept his court these