One of the women came to me, and without seeing who she was, or thinking of doing so, I reached out my hand for the horn that she held up, and at that moment some one from behind seemed to run against my horse’s flank, and he lashed out and reared as if he was hurt.  My rein was loose, and I was bending carelessly over to take the horn, and it was all that I could do to keep my seat for the moment.  As for the girl, she dropped the horn and ran from the plunging horse into the doorway for safety.

Then I heard the sharp crack of a whip, and the voice of the head huntsman speaking angrily: 

“Out on you for a silly oaf!—­What mean you by going near the thane at all?”

The whip cracked again, and the long lash curled round the shoulders of a ragged thrall, who tried in vain to escape it.

“On my word, I believe you did it on purpose!” the huntsman cried, with a third shrewd lash that found its lodgment rightly.

“Mercy, Master,” mumbled the man, writhing; “it is this terrible crossing of the eyes.  I do not rightly see where I go.”

I had quieted the horse by this time, and I held up my hand to stay the lash from the thrall.  Some one picked up the horn that the girl had let fall.

“Let him be,” I said.  “It could but have been a chance, and he is lucky not to have been kicked.  See, he does squint most amazingly.”

“Ay,” growled the huntsman, “so he does; but I never knew a cross-eyed man before who had any trouble in walking straight enough.”

The thrall slunk away among his fellows.  He was a round-shouldered man with hay-coloured hair and a stubby beard of the same, and he rubbed his shoulders with his elbows lifted as he went.  Then the steward gave me a fresh horn, and we said farewell to our host and hostess, and Erpwald and I went our way.

“I thought that the horse would have knocked the Welsh girl over,” he said presently.  “She was pretty nimble, however.  That churl must have kicked your horse sharply to make him plunge as he did.”

“Trod on his fetlock most likely,” I answered.  “Clumsy knave.”

“Well, that huntsman knows how to use a lash, at all events, and he will have a care in future.  But how my head does ache!”

“That is likely enough,” I said, laughing.  “It was a shrewd knock, and it kept you in that hole for the longest hour and a half I have ever known.”

“It does take somewhat out of the common to hurt me much,” he said simply.

“Well, by tomorrow you will be famed all over Glastonbury as the man who fell over Cheddar cliffs and escaped by reason of lighting on the thickest part of him,” I answered.

It was a poor jest enough, but it set him laughing.  I did not wish him to say more of what had just happened, for I was puzzled about it, and wanted to get my thoughts to work.  He had spoken of the very thing that I had been warned of, for almost had I taken the horn from the hand of a Briton—­the Welsh girl of whom he spoke once before.  I had forgotten her, for I do not think that I had ever seen her since she came here, until now.  But at this moment I seemed to have a feeling that her face was in some way familiar to me, though only in that half-formed way that troubles one, and I was trying to recall how this might be.