day thou shalt set upon both -- they be only fit for killing."

The boy made no reply, but he thought a great deal about that which he had
seen. Knights were cruel to knights -- the poor were cruel to the rich --
and every day of the journey had forced upon his childish mind that
everyone must be very cruel and hard upon the poor. He had seen them in
all their sorrow and misery and poverty -- stretching a long, scattering
line all the way from London town. Their bent backs, their poor thin
bodies and their hopeless, sorrowful faces attesting the weary wretchedness
of their existence.

"Be no one happy in all the world ?" he once broke out to the old woman.

"Only he who wields the mightiest sword," responded the old woman. "You
have seen, my son, that all Englishmen are beasts. They set upon and kill
one another for little provocation or for no provocation at all. When thou
shalt be older, thou shalt go forth and kill them all for unless thou kill
them, they will kill thee."

At length, after tiresome days upon the road, they came to a little hamlet
in the hills. Here the donkeys were disposed of and a great horse
purchased, upon which the two rode far up into a rough and uninviting
country away from the beaten track, until late one evening they approached
a ruined castle.

The frowning walls towered high against the moonlit sky beyond, and where a
portion of the roof had fallen in, the cold moon, shining through the
narrow unglazed windows, gave to the mighty pile the likeness of a huge,
many-eyed ogre crouching upon the flank of a deserted world, for nowhere
was there other sign of habitation.