fought by the side of their King in battle, and there were those who had done high service for him with brain and spoken word when his power stood in danger of being overthrown.  To the boy there seemed indeed to have been no battle either of Church or State, or with enemies in open field in which Mertouns had not fought.  Long before the Conquest, Normandy had known their high-strung spirit and fiery valour.  At Senlac, Guilbert de Mertoun had stood near William of Normandy when he gave his command to his archers that they should shoot into the air, whereby an arrow sought English Harold for its mark and pierced him through eye and brain, leaving him slain, and William conqueror.  This same Guilbert, William had loved for his fierce bravery and his splendid aim in their hunting the high deer, of whom ’twas said the monarch “loved them as if he had been their father;” and when the Domesday Book was made, rich lands were given to him that, as the King said—­there should be somewhat worthy of his holding to be recorded therein.  It had been a Guilbert de Mertoun who rode with Rufus when he would cross to Normandy to put down insurrection there.  These two were alike in their spirit (therefore little Roxholm had ever worshipped both), and when they reached the seashore in a raging storm, and the sailors, from fear, refused to put forth, and Rufus cried, “Heard ye ever of a King who was drowned,” ’twas Guilbert who sprang forward swearing he would set sail himself if others would not, and so stirred the cowards with his fierce passionate courage that they obeyed the orders given them and crossed the raging sea’s arm in the tempest, Guilbert standing in their midst spurring them with shouts, while the wind so raged that only a man of giant strength could have stood upright, and his voice could scarce be heard above its fury.  And ’twas he who was at the front when the insurgents were overpowered.  Of this one, of whom ’twas handed down that he was of huge build, and had beard and hair as flaming as Rufus’s own, there were legends which made him the idol of Roxholm’s heart in his childhood.  Again and again it had been his custom to demand that they should be repeated to him—­the stories of the stags he had pierced to the heart in one day’s hunting in the New Forest—­the story of how he was held in worship by his villeins, and of his mercifulness to them in days when nobles had the power of life and death, and to do any cruelty to those in servitude to them.

In Edward the Third’s time, when the Black Death swept England, there had lived another Guilbert who, having for consort a lovely, noble lady, they two had hand in hand devoted themselves to battling the pestilence among their serfs and retainers, and with the aid of a brother of great learning (the first Gerald of the house) had sought out and discovered such remedies as saved scores of lives and modified the sufferings of all.  At the end of their labours, when the violence of the plague was assuaged, the lovely lady Aloys had died of the fatigues she had borne and her husband had devoted himself to a life of merciful deeds, the history of which was a wondrous thing for an impassioned and romance-loving boy to pore over.