“Are you Gascons?” asked the Prince, looking with keener interest at the two youths; for he shared some of his father’s instincts of government, and was always well disposed towards Gascon subjects.

“We are half Gascon and half English, may it please you, fair Prince,” answered Gaston readily, “and we will follow you to the death.”

“I well believe it, my good comrades,” answered the Prince quickly; “and right glad shall we be of your company and assistance.  For our errand lies amidst dark forests with their hidden perils and dangers, and I wot that none know better what such dangers are nor how they may be escaped than our brethren of Gascony.”

“Then you know on what quest we are bent, sweet Prince?”

Edward nodded his head as he looked over his shoulder.  “Ay, that I do right well, and that will I tell you incontinently if no eavesdroppers be about.  Ye know that of late days brave knights and gentlemen have been mustering to our Court from all parts of this land?  Now amongst these is one Sir Hugh Vavasour, who comes from his house of Woodcrych, not half a day’s ride from our Royal Palace of Guildford; and with him he has brought his son, one Alexander, with whom I yestere’en fell into converse.  I say not that I liked the youth himself.  He seemed to me something over bold, yet lacking in those graces of chivalry that are so dear to us.  Still it was in talking with him that I heard this thing which has set my blood boiling in my veins.”

“What thing is that, fair Prince?” asked John.

And then the young Edward told his tale.  It was such a tale as was only too often heard in olden days, though it did not always reach the ears of royalty.  The long and expensive, and as yet somewhat fruitless, wars in which Edward had been engaged almost ever since he came to the throne, had greatly impoverished his subjects, and with poverty there arose those other evils inseparable from general distress —­ robbery, freebooting, crime in its darkest and ugliest aspects; bands of hungry men, ruined and beggared, partly perhaps through misfortune, but partly through their own fault, wandering about the country ravaging and robbing, leaving desolation behind them, and too often, if opposed, committing acts of brutal cruelty upon defenceless victims, as a warning to others.

A band such as this was just now scouring the woods around Guildford.  Young Vavasour had heard of depredations committed close against the walls of his own home, and had heard of many outrages which had been suffered by the poor folks around.  Cattle had been driven off, their hardly-gathered fuel had vanished in the night; sometimes lonely houses were attacked, and the miserable inhabitants, if they offered resistance, stabbed to the heart by the marauders.  One or two girls had been missed from their homes, and were said to have fallen a prey to the robber band.  All these things, and the latter item especially, stirred the hot blood in the young Prince’s veins, and he was all on fire to do some doughty deed that should at once exterminate such evildoers from the face of the earth, strike terror into the hearts of other bands, and show that the spirit of chivalry was yet alive in the kingdom, and that the King’s son was the first to fly to the succour of the distressed and the feeble.