“Back in the field again, I found myself one day, cut off, surrounded, hewn down, taken prisoner; but by a generous foe.

“Thereafter followed years of much adventure; escapes, far distant wanderings, strange company.  Many months I spent in a mountain fastness with a wise Hebrew Rabbi, who taught me his sacred Scriptures; going back to the beginning of all things, before the world was; yet shrewd in judgment of the present, and throwing a weird light forward upon the future.  A strange man; wise, as are all of that Chosen Race; and a faithful friend.  He did much to heal my hurt and woo me back to sanity.

“Later, more than a year with a band of holy monks in a desert monastery, high among the rocks; good Fathers who believed in Greek and Latin as surest of all balsams for a wounded spirit, and who made me to become deeply learned in Apostolic writings, and in the teachings of the Church.  But, for all their best endeavours, I could not feel called to the perpetual calm of the Cloister.  We are a line of fighters and hunters, men to whom pride of race and love of hearth and home, are primal instincts.

“Thus, after many further wanderings and much varying adventure, having by a strange chance heard news of the death of my father, and that my mother mourned.  In solitude, the opening of this year found me landed in England—­I who, by most, had long been given up for dead; though Martin Goodfellow, failing to find trace of me in Palestine, had gone back to Cumberland, and staunchly maintained his belief that I lived, a captive, and should some day make my escape, and return.

“I passed with all speed to our Castle on the moors, knowing a mother’s heart waited here, for mothers never cease to watch and hope.  And, sure enough, as I rode up, the great doors flew wide; the house waited its master; the mother was on the threshold to greet her son.  Aye!  It was good to be at home once more—­even in the land where my woman was bearing children to another man.

“We spent a few happy days, I and my mother, together.  Then—­the joy of hope fulfilled being sometimes a swifter harbinger to another world than the heaviest load of sorrow—­she passed, without pain or sickness, smiling, in her sleep; she passed—­leaving my home desolate indeed.

“Not having known of my betrothal to thee, because of the old feud between our families, and my reluctance to cross her wish that I should wed Alfrida, thy name was not spoken between us; but I learned from her that my cousin ’Frida lay dying at her manor, nigh to Chester, of some lingering disease contracted in eastern lands.”

“With the first stirrings of Spring in forest and pasture, I felt moved to ride south to the Court, and report my return to the King; yet waited, strangely loath to go abroad where any turn of the road might bring me face to face with Humphry.  I doubted, should we meet, if I could pass, without slaying him, the man who had stolen my betrothed from me.  So I stayed in my own domain, bringing things into order, working in the armoury, and striving by hard exercise to throttle the grim demon of despair.