gracefulness.

All these arts were being acquired at the castle of Aescendune by
Etienne de Malville, Louis de Marmontier, Pierre de Morlaix, and
Wilfred of Aescendune, all of the age of fifteen or sixteen, but
more advanced physically than boys of such years would be now; and,
sooth to say, the boys had a stern preceptor in Hugo de Malville.

They slept in a common dormitory in one of the towers, on beds
resembling boxes, stuffed with straw, with the skins of the wolf or
bear for coverlets. They sprang out when the morning horn blew the
reveille. First they attended the early mass in St. Wilfred's
monastic church, said at daybreak--for the Normans were very exact
in such duties--after which they fenced, rode, or wrestled, and in
mimic war gained an appetite for breakfast.

They ate dried meats, as a rule, with their cakes of bread, and
washed them down with thin wine or mead, much diluted, and then the
forest was generally the rendezvous.

On winter evenings, or when the weather was very bad, the chaplain
was expected to teach them a little reading or writing in Latin or
Norman French--never in English; and this was almost all the
learning they acquired, in the modern sense of the word.

But they knew a hundred things modern boys know nothing at all
about, and every muscle and nerve was braced to be steady and true,
whether for fight or sport. Our young pages could find their way in
the deep woods by observing the moss on the trees, or the sides on
which the oaks or elms threw their branches the most freely; and