I was near sixteen years old, and I stood tall for my years, some five foot and a half, and for a lad I was well made, if yet lacking my full strength and girth round the chest, such a lad as in two years more Geoffrey my grandson will grow to, if God will. Fair I should have been if I were not burnt black with the hot sun pouring through the salt air, and my fair hair clustered crisp and neat round my temples and neck. So stood I, no doubt a fair and honourable youth, at the entering in of the abbot's inner chamber.

And the abbot, sitting in his carven chair amid his rolls of parchment and instruments of writing, raised me swiftly as I stooped to kiss his hand. Dark-eyed, hawk-nosed, with black hair not yet flecked with snow, there was an awe and stateliness in him whether he spoke to gentle or to simple. He was a Norman, and being such feared none, and had his will, and when it was possible mixed a rare gentleness with his acts and words.

"Son," said he, "thou hast been happy here?"

The keen eyes were fixed upon me, and I could not but answer the truth, even had I wished to lie.

"Yes, holy father," I answered.

"And thou wouldst stay here ever?" The eyes were still upon me, and they searched my soul as a bright flush, I knew, rose to my cheek, and I hesitated how to answer. Then suddenly, as I stood in doubt, they seemed to change, and it was as if sunlight gleamed over a landscape that before lay dark and grim, for the abbot smiled upon me with the kindest of all smiles. "Thou feelest no calling to the cloister and the cowl, the book and the pen, the priesthood, and the life of prayer?"

"Ah, no, holy Father." I had gained my tongue, and spoke boldly, if reverently. "Books and prayer are good; but I am young, and there is a world beyond these grey walls, and my kinsmen fight and do rather than pray or read."

"The eaglet beats his wings against his cage already," said the abbot, kindly; "it is indeed a shapely bird. Thou art right, lad. There is a world outside, where men strive and fight and do—how blindly and how wildly thou knowest not. But the battle is not to the strong or the race to the swift, though so it seem. Go, then, out into the world boldly but warily, and be thou a good soldier, as thou art a good scholar. Thine uncle shall know of these words between us."

I knelt again and kissed his hand, and left his broad and pleasant chamber.

And outside I strolled upon the green, dim vague thoughts surging up swift into my mind, as I went striding on swifter than I knew. Ere long I reached the extreme limit of the land, the high-piled rocks of L'Ancresse. I looked out upon the sea to where Auremen lay flat and wide against the sky, and I thought I could descry the Norman shores and La Hague Cape stretching towards me; and, though I knew no home but the Vale Cloister, another voice of home seemed calling me over thither. A voice in which battlecries and trumpet-blasts were strangely mingled; and I seemed to see men fighting and striving, and banners and pennons flying; and a voice seemed to spring up from my soul, bidding me go forth, and fight and strive with them, and gain something—I knew not what.

I knew not then; but I know now, what that voice was, that yearning, that discontent with the past. It was the Norman blood rising within me, the blood of force, and battle, and achievement. Surely there is something in us Normans—a hidden fire, which sends us forth and onwards, and makes us claim what we will for our own! And having claimed it, we fight for it, and fighting we win it. So with Tancred of Hauteville, so with Rou, so with William. Will of iron, heart of fire! A grand thing it is to be born a Norman.

CHAPTER II.

Now, men were busy in the Vale. I have yet said no word of Vale Castle, built a mile away from the cloister, of hewn stone, goodly and strong. It lay upon the left horn of St. Sampson's Harbour, near where that holy man landed with the good news of God in days of old, and its stout bastions rested on the bare rock, and its walls seemed one with the rock below, so thick and stout they were, built as Normans alone can build, to last as long as the rocks, as long as the earth. And in Vale Castle no lord or baron ruled. It was the Castle and outward defence of the Vale Cloister, and its lord was the Abbot of the Vale. And within its ramparts there was room (as we found ere long), in times of danger from pirate or strange foes, for all the brethren and children of the Cloister, and for many more besides, so that when the watch-tower fire sprang into life upon the beacon, and the alarm-bell rang out by night or day, the folk of the dale came flocking in with their babes and their most prized goods for shelter beneath the abbot's wing. Vale Castle feared no pirate-band, and in a short space all our most precious things could be secured behind those walls snug and safe enough, until the evil men who had come to alarm our peace steered their long ships away again, sore dissatisfied with the plunder of our isle. So well guarded we were, and so strong were our three castles, within whose walls all who listed could find safety. As, indeed, it proved in the attack of the great Moor, of which this chronicle will chiefly tell.

Now, the Castle had been built some forty years before, by none other than the great Cherbourg himself, Duke Robert's engineer. For it chanced that Duke Robert was royally entertained years ago by Abbot Magloirios, when he was forced by foul weather to put into L'Ancresse Bay, who, on his departure, left Cherbourg and other skilled men to build three castles for their safety against pirates. So it was through Duke Robert's stay at the Vale that our Castle was made so strong. Thus God brought here, as ever, good out of evil.

And among the lay brothers were good soldiers, who could man the Castle. And once, in bygone days, they say a whole company of knights (all resting now in Abraham's bosom, and their bodies in the Vale churchyard) came together, and sought to be made quit of the world and its strife in our peaceful cloister. These, though they left the world behind, were able to teach for safety's sake something of warlike matters to the brethren; and thus it chanced that our brothers were ready to be men of war when peace was impossible, and men said of them, in rhyming fashion—

Now, about this Castle of late men had been more than ever busy. Sundry instruments of besieged men of a new and deadly fashion lay in the armoury, and were at times by Brother Hugo brought out and practised by the brethren that formed, as he said, his corps d'armes. Then were they soldiers indeed, not monks at all, as, cassock and cowl thrown aside, they drew the bows, or aimed with their great engines the balls of stone and iron.

Now, it was in those days that the abbot sent me on matters more heavy than I knew to that archbishop of whom I have already made mention, who, his state laid aside, lay in exile as a poor humble man, though Duke William's uncle, in a small moat-house, by name Blanchelande, with little land attached beyond the forest of St. Pierre, and hard by the bay of the Saints of God.

Though I would fain haste to our meeting, yet must I first tell what manner of man he was reckoned by the folk of our island and by ourselves. Abbot Michael had expressly charged us, on his first coming, we should believe nothing of aught we heard of him. Yet tales went round, and gathered force as they went, ill tales that took scant time to travel; and we lads, innocent of