“Mother,” he said, when they were alone, “I fear me that Sir Walter is about to make a great raid upon the outlaws.  Armed men have been coming in all the morning from the castles round, and if it be not against the Baron de Wortham that these preparations are intended, and methinks it is not, it must needs be against the landless men.”

“What would you do, Cuthbert?” his mother asked anxiously.  “It will not do for you to be found meddling in these matters.  At present you stand well in the favor of the earl, who loves you for the sake of his wife, to whom you are kin, and of your father, who did him good liegeman’s service.”

“But, mother, I have many friends in the wood.  There is Cnut, their chief, your own first cousin, and many others of our friends, all good men and true, though forced by the cruel Norman laws to refuge in the woods.”

“What would you do?” again his mother asked.

“I would take Ronald my pony and ride to warn them of the danger that threatens.”

“You had best go on foot, my son.  Doubtless men have been set to see that none from the Saxon homesteads carry the warning to the woods.  The distance is not beyond your reach, for you have often wandered there, and on foot you can evade the eye of the watchers; but one thing, my son, you must promise, and that is, that in no case, should the earl and his bands meet with the outlaws, will you take part in any fray or struggle.”

“That will I willingly, mother,” he said.  “I have no cause for offense against the castle or the forest, and my blood and my kin are with both.  I would fain save shedding of blood in a quarrel like this.  I hope that the time may come when Saxon and Norman may fight side by side, and I may be there to see.”

A few minutes later, having changed his blue doublet for one of more sober and less noticeable color, Cuthbert started for the great forest, which then stretched to within a mile of Erstwood.  In those days a large part of the country was covered with forest, and the policy of the Normans in preserving these woods for the chase tended to prevent the increase of cultivation.

The farms and cultivated lands were all held by Saxons, who although nominally handed over to the nobles to whom William and his successors had given the fiefs, saw but little of their Norman masters.  These stood, indeed, much in the position in which landlords stand to their tenants, payment being made, for the most part, in produce.  At the edge of the wood the trees grew comparatively far apart, but as Cuthbert proceeded further into its recesses, the trees in the virgin forest stood thick and close together.  Here and there open glades ran across each other, and in these his sharp eye, accustomed to the forest, could often see the stags starting away at the sound of his footsteps.