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.

Upon the romances of these lives the imagination of the infant Roxholm
had nourished itself, and the boy Roxholm being so fed had builded his
young life and its ideals upon them.

It was of these ancestors of his house and of their high deeds he found
pleasure and profit in talking to his kinsman and friend, and 'twas an
incident which took place during one of my Lord Dunstanwolde's visits
to Camylott which led them to this manner of converse.