The dogs gave tongue and the men also. 

 'Wolf! wolf!' cried the huntsmen, and half-a-dozen knights of the meinie who carried hauberk and lance dashed forward in pursuit. 

 All was excitement and commotion. Steeds chafed and curveted, and kept their riders from requiring answers to inconvenient questions, and Emma Fitzosbern felt grateful exceedingly to the fiery Oliver for the trouble he gave his master, and the excuse which his antics afforded her to slip behind to the side of her bower-maiden, Eadgyth of Norwich, who was following on a sober-minded brown palfrey, being but an indifferent horsewoman, and always desirous of a quiet mount. 

 De Guader gave Oliver the rein and galloped forward. 

 'I am in sore distress, Emma,' said Eadgyth, as she joined her, 'for my foolish Freya has rushed off after the rest of them, as if a gazehound could pull down a wolf, forsooth! I much fear me she will be hurt.' 

 Almost as she spoke, the knights returned, one holding aloft the wolfs head as a trophy; but another, a young Norman in De Guader's following, Sir Aimand de Sourdeval by name, carried a wounded hound in his arms. 

 'It is Freya!' exclaimed Eadgyth, and, riding forward towards the knight, she asked if her favourite was much wounded. 

 'Nothing dangerously, sweet donzelle,' replied Sir Aimand, looking up with a bright smile, and evidently pleased to have so cheerful an answer to give, both for the hound's sake and the lady's. 'A bite in the forearm, nothing worse, though it lames her. I will bind it, with your permission, when we reach the castle; I have a salve reckoned most healing for the wounds of hounds, and I hope it may prove its worth in the healing of thine.' 

 Eadgyth thanked the young knight for his courtesy with much sincerity, for she had brought up the greyhound to her own hand, and the creature was full of gentle ways and pretty tricks, which her mistress had taught her, besides being exceptionally beautiful, with a satin skin as white as milk and a body as lithe as any eel's. 

 It was a great relief to Eadgyth also to note how tenderly Sir Aimand handled her favourite, so that the hound lay quite passive in his hold, and she felt content to leave her to the knight's tender mercies. 

 When they reached the castle, Emma Fitzosbern found herself still carrying the tassel-gentle on her 

 Prev. P 31/228 next