He bent² his direction toward the north and Leicester's castle, where he had reason to believe he would find a certain young woman, and though it galled³ his sore heart to think upon the humiliation⁴ that lay waiting his coming, he could not do less than that which he felt his honor demanded.

Beside him on the march rode the fierce red giant, Shandy, and the wiry, gray little man of Torn, whom the outlaw⁵ called father.

In no way, save the gray hair and the parchment-surfaced skin, had the old fellow changed in all these years. Without bodily vices⁶, and clinging ever to the open air and the exercise of the foil, he was still young in muscle and endurance.

For five years, he had not crossed foils with Norman of Torn, but he constantly practiced with the best swordsmen of the wild horde⁷, so that it had become a subject often discussed among the men as to which of the two, father or son, was the greater swordsman.

Always taciturn, the old fellow rode in his usual silence. Long since had Norman of Torn usurped⁸ by the force of his strong character and masterful ways, the position of authority in the castle of Torn. The old man simply rode and fought with the others when it pleased him; and he had come on this trip because he felt that there was that impending⁹ for which he had waited over twenty years.

Cold and hard, he looked with no love upon the man he still called “my son.” If he held any sentiment toward Norman of Torn, it was one of pride which began and ended in the almost fiendish skill of his pupil's

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