Page:Rewards and Fairies (Kipling, 1910).djvu/347

319 'Not he!' said Puck. There was never enough brute Norman in you to hang a man for taking a buck.'

'I—I cannot abide to hear their widows screech. But why am I on horseback while you are afoot?' He dismounted lightly, tapped Swallow on the chest, so that the wise thing backed instead of turning in the narrow- ride, and put himself at the head of the little procession. He walked as though all the woods belonged to him. 'I have often told my friends,' he went on, 'that Red William the King was not the only Norman found dead in a forest while he hunted.'

'D'you mean William Rufus?' said Dan.

Yes,' said Puck, kicking a clump of red toadstools off a dead log.

'For example, there was a Knight new from Normandy,' Sir Richard went on, 'to whom Henry our King granted a manor in Kent near by. He chose to hang his forester's son the day before a deer-hunt that he gave to pleasure the King.'

'Now when would that be?' said Puck, and scratched an ear thoughtfully.

'The summer of the year King Henry broke his brother Robert of Normandy at Tenchebrai fight. Our ships were even then at Pevensey loading for the war.

'What happened to the knight?' Dan asked.

'They found him pinned to an ash, three arrows through his leather coat. I should have worn mail that day.'

'And did you see him pinned up?' Dan continued.