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Rh predilection is for your own manly language, you do not at least receive the Norman French into your favour, so far as the mystery of wood-craft and hunting is concerned. Surely no tongue is so rich in the various phrases which the field sports demand, or furnishes means to the experienced woodsman so well to express his jovial art."

"Good Father Aymer," said the Saxon, "be it known to you, I care not for those over-sea refinements, without which I can well enough take my pleasure in the woods. I can wind my horn, though I call not the blast either a recheate or a morte—I can chear my dogs on the prey, and I can flay and quarter the animal when it is brought down, without using the new-fangled jargon of curee, arbor, nombles, and all the babble of the fabulous Sir Tristrem."

"The French," said the Templar, raising his voice with the presumptuous and authoritative tone which he used upon all occasions, "is not only the natural language of the chase, but that of love and of war, in which ladies should be won and enemies defied."

"Pledge me in a cup of wine, Sir Templar,"