It was summer time, and the sun rose early; welcome was its light
to our traveller, who rode on, trusting soon to reach a monastic
house in the neighbourhood of Banbury, where a few poor English
monks, not yet dispossessed by the Norman intruders, served God in
their vocation, according to their light, and offered hospitality
to the wayfarer.

To these poor monks Wilfred had been commended by the good prior of
Aescendune, and with them he purposed to rest all day, for it was
not safe to travel before nightfall without a Norman passport. For
Norman riders, soldiers of fortune, infested all the highways, and
they would certainly require Wilfred, or any other English
traveller, to show cause for being on the road, and, in default of
such cause, would render very rough usage.

It was now drawing near the third hour of the day, and Wilfred had
already spied his resting place from the summit of a hill. In spite
of his woes, too, he wanted his breakfast, and was already
speculating on the state of the monastic larder, when the road
entered a small wood.

It was not a straight road at all, and the rider could not see a
hundred yards before him, when suddenly a troop of horse came round
a curve at a smart trot, and were upon him before he could escape
their notice.

"Whom have we here?" exclaimed the leader.

Wilfred knew him; it was that same Count Eustace de Blois, who had