On the edge of the fen a cottager came out to beg audience of the knight, and the Prior began talking with Eleanor about the birds of that region.  She found that he knew them both by their French and English names, and seemed to love them well.  He told her that in the Carthusian monastery he lived, as did the other monks, in a little cell opening on a narrow garden-plot.  In this garden he toiled during certain hours each day, tending the pulse, kale, and herbs which made a great part of his food.  One evening a little bird came to share his simple supper, and returned each day.  He fed her, and she earned her food by keeping his garden clear of grubs, worms and insects.  Then for a long time she did not appear.  He feared she had been killed, but at last she came proudly back with three nestlings just able to fly.  This monk had always from his boyhood had bird-companions.  The latest was a wild swan that came out of the marshes to follow him about.  When he went away the swan would disappear in the marsh, but watched for his return and was always there to welcome him.

“Sometimes I think,” he added, half to Eleanor and half to her father, “that there are people like that in this ancient stubbed land—­men like the bittern and the eagle, who will not be tamed.  They come to you sometimes, but they will not be driven.”

“I see,” said the knight thoughtfully.  “But what of a man who will take a gift with one hand and thieve with the other?”

“Some men,” said Hugh of Avalon, “are your friends because you have done them service, but now and then one is bound to you by service he has done you—­and that is the stronger tie.  My swan would not love me as he does if he came only to be fed.”

The cottager had been complaining that Tammuz and his tribe had been destroying his crops, and wished them punished.  The knight had ridden over to see, and came back doubtful.  He said to the cottager that it did not seem to him like the work of a spiteful neighbor.  Was it not possible that some four-footed creature had ravaged the crops?  The cottager did not believe that it was.  He was sure it was Tammuz.  Neither knew that a lean black-haired peasant, lying along close to the limb of a great beech tree, had heard every word of the conversation and also witnessed the little scene with the falcon.

The marsh was very dry, and Sir Walter had a mind to ride into it a little way and see how far one could really go.  If wild hogs were rooting about the place it would be well to know it.  Bidding Eleanor wait for him in the tiny clearing, he and the Prior pushed their horses in among the reeds where a ridge offered a fair foothold.  Marcel, the squires and Roger were not far off, having great sport.

Roger was rather disappointed in Eleanor.  If she objected to killing things, why had she been so happy to come, and so fond of her falcon?  The truth was that Eleanor had never thought of Mabonde as a cruel bird.  It was the nature of a falcon to kill its own food.  The spice of danger in the keen talons and fierce beak made her pet even a little more fascinating.  But it seemed different, somehow, when she herself sent the merlin forth to kill.  As she sat waiting for her father, she felt that never again would she wish to fly falcon at quarry.