qualities, and that and the condition of their master.

Here, however, ended the direct resemblance, even of their garb; for, while the taller and better formed man of the two, who was also somewhat the darker haired and finer featured, wore a species of rude leather gauntlets, with buskins of the same material, reaching as high as the binding of the frock, the other man was bare-armed and bare-legged also, with the exception of an inartificial covering of thongs of boar-hide, plaited from the ankle to the knee upward. The latter also carried no weapon but a long quarter-staff, though he held a brace of noble snow-white alans—the wire-haired grayhounds of the day—in a leash of twisted buckskin; while his brother—for so strong was their personal resemblance, that their kinship could scarcely be doubted—carried a short, steel-headed javelin in his hand, and had beside him, unrestrained, a large coarser hound, of a deep brindled gray color, with clear, hazel eyes; and what was strange to say, in view of the condition of this man, unmaimed, according to the cruel forest code of the Norman kings.

This difference in the apparel, and, it may be added, in the neatness, well-being, and general superior bearing of him who was the better armed, might perhaps be explained by a glance at the engraving on the respective collars. For while that of the one, and he the better clad and better looking, bore that he was "Kenric the Dark, thral of the land to Philip de Morville," that of the other stamped him "Eadwulf the Red, gros thral" of the same Norman lord.

Both Saxon serfs of the mixed Northern race, which, largely intermixed with Danish blood, produced a nobler, larger-limbed, loftier, and more athletic race than the pure Saxons of the southern counties—they had fallen, with the properties of the Saxon thane, to whom they had belonged in common, into the hands of the foreign conqueror. Yet Kenric was of that higher class—for there were classes even among these miserable beings—which could not be sold, nor parted from the soil on which they were born, but at their own option; while Eadwulf, although his own twin-brother, for some cause into which it were needless to inquire, could be sold at any time, or to any person, or even swapped for an animal, or gambled away at the slightest caprice of his owner.

To this may be added, that, probably from caprice, or perhaps from some predilection for his personal appearance and motions, which were commanding, and even graceful, or for his bearing, which was evidently less churlish than that of his countrymen in general, his master had distinguished him in some respects from the other serfs of the soil; and, without actually raising him to any of the higher offices reserved to the Normans, among whom the very servitors claimed to be, and indeed were, gentlemen, had employed him in subordinate stations under his huntsman, and intrusted him so far as occasionally to permit his carrying arms into the field.

With him, as probably is the case in most things, the action produced reaction; and what had been the effect of causes, came in time to be the cause of effects. Some real or supposed advantages procured for him the exceeding small dignity of some poor half-conceded rights; and those rights, the effect of perhaps an imaginary superiority, soon became the causes of something more real—of a sentiment of half independence, a desire of achieving perfect liberty.

In this it was that he excelled his brother; but we must not anticipate. What were the characters of the men, and from their characters what events grew, and what fates followed, it is for the reader of these pages to decipher.

After our men had tarried where we found them, waiting till expectation should grow into certainty for above half an hour, and the morning had become clear and sunny, the distant indescribable sound, heard indistinctly in the woods, ripened into that singularly modulated, all sweet, but half-discordant crash, which the practiced ear is not slow to recognize as the cry of a large pack of hounds, running hard on a hot scent in high timber.

Anon the notes of individual hounds could be distinguished; now the sharp, savage treble of some fleet brach, now the deep bass of some southron talbot, rising above or falling far below the diapason of the pack—and now, shrill and clear, the long, keen flourish of a Norman bugle.

At the last signal, Kenric rose silently but quickly to his feet, while his dog, though evidently excited by the approaching rally of the chase, remained steady at his couchant position, expectant of his master's words. The snow-white alans, on the contrary, fretted, and strained, and whimpered, fighting against their leashes, while Eadwulf sat still, stubborn or stupid, and animated by no ambition, by no hope, perhaps scarce even by a fear.

But, as the chase drew nigher, "Up, Eadwulf!" cried his brother, quickly, "up, and away. Thou'lt have to stretch thy legs, even now, to reach the four lane ends, where the relays must be, when the stag crosses. Up, man, I say! Is this the newer spirit you spoke of but now? this the way you would earn largess whereby to win your freedom? Out upon it! that I should say so of my own brother, but thou'lt win nothing but the shackles, if not the thong. Away! lest my words prove troth."

Eadwulf the Red arose with a scowl, but without a word, shook himself like a water-spaniel, and set off at a dogged swinging trot, the beautiful high-bred dogs bounding before his steps like winged creatures, and struggling with the leashes that debarred their perfect freedom—the man degraded, by the consciousness of misery and servitude, into the type of a soulless brute—the brutes elevated, by high breeding, high cultivation, and high treatment, almost into the similitude of intellectual beings.

Kenric looked after him, as he departed, with a troubled eye, and shook his head, as he lost sight of him among the trees in the fore-ground. "Alack!" he said, "for Eadwulf, my brother! He waxes worse, not better." But, as he spoke, a nearer crash of the hounds' music came pealing through the tree-tops, and with a stealthy step he crossed over the summit to the rear of the hillock, where he concealed himself behind the boll of a stupendous oak, making his grayhound lie down in tall fern beside him.

The approaching hounds came to a sudden fault, and silence, deep as that of haunted midnight, fell on the solitary place.

 1

Omnia sunt wasta. Modo omnino wasta. Ex maxima parte wasta.—Doomsday Book, vol. i. fol. 309.

 2

Duo Taini tenueri. ibi sunt ii villani cum I carruca. valuit xl solidos. modo ilii sol.—Ibid. vol. i. fol. 845.

  CHAPTER II.

THE GOOD SERVICE.

There is something exceedingly singular in the depth of almost palpable silence which seems to fall upon a tract of woodland country, on the sudden cessation of a full cry of stag-hounds; which cry has in itself, apart from its stirring harmony of discords, something of cheerfulness and sociality, conveyed