Ironhook, and I owe you thanks for it; for though he is my good friend,
and will be my son-in-law erelong, yet a quarrel with him is more than I
can abide just now, and I should not like to have seen my guest and my
kinsman slain in my house."

Hereward would have said that he thought there was no fear of that; but he
prudently held his tongue, and having an end to gain, listened instead of
talking.

"Twenty years ago, of course, I could have thrashed him as easily as--;
but now I am getting old and shaky, and the man has been a great help in
need. Six kings of these parts has he killed for me, who drove off my
cattle, and stopped my tin works, and plundered my monks' cells too, which
is worse, while I was away sailing the seas; and he is a right good fellow
at heart, though he be a little rough. So be friends with him as long as
you stay here, and if I can do you a service I will."

They went in to their morning meal, at which Hereward resolved to keep the
peace which he longed to break, and therefore, as was to be expected,
broke.

For during the meal the fair lady, with no worse intention, perhaps, than
that of teasing her tyrant, fell to open praises of Hereward's fair face
and golden hair; and being insulted therefore by the Ironhook, retaliated
by observations about his personal appearance, which were more common in
the eleventh century than they happily are now. He, to comfort himself,
drank deep of the French wine which had just been brought and broached,
and then went out into the court-yard, where, in the midst of his admiring
fellow-ruffians, he enacted a scene as ludicrous as it was pitiable. All
the childish vanity of the savage boiled over. He strutted, he shouted, he