Men of Iron | Page 5

chattering with
cold.
He remembered being wrapped in the sheepskin that lay at the foot of
his bed, and of being carried in Diccon Bowman's arms down the silent
darkness of the winding stair-way, with the great black giant shadows
swaying and flickering upon the stone wall as the dull flame of the
lamp swayed and flickered in the cold breathing of the night air.
Below were his father and mother and two or three others. A stranger

stood warming his hands at a newly-made fire, and little Myles, as he
peeped from out the warm sheepskin, saw that he was in riding-boots
and was covered with mud. He did not know till long years afterwards
that the stranger was a messenger sent by a friend at the King's court,
bidding his father fly for safety.
They who stood there by the red blaze of the fire were all very still,
talking in whispers and walking on tiptoes, and Myles's mother hugged
him in her arms, sheepskin and all, kissing him, with the tears
streaming down her cheeks, and whispering to him, as though he could
understand their trouble, that they were about to leave their home
forever.
Then Diccon Bowman carried him out into the strangeness of the
winter midnight.
Outside, beyond the frozen moat, where the osiers, stood stark and stiff
in their winter nakedness, was a group of dark figures waiting for them
with horses. In the pallid moonlight Myles recognized the well-known
face of Father Edward, the Prior of St. Mary's.
After that came a long ride through that silent night upon the
saddle-bow in front of Diccon Bowman; then a deep, heavy sleep, that
fell upon him in spite of the galloping of the horses.
When next he woke the sun was shining, and his home and his whole
life were changed.
CHAPTER 2
From the time the family escaped from Falworth Castle that midwinter
night to the time Myles was sixteen years old he knew nothing of the
great world beyond Crosbey-Dale. A fair was held twice in a
twelvemonth at the market-town of Wisebey, and three times in the
seven years old Diccon Bowman took the lad to see the sights at that
place. Beyond these three glimpses of the outer world he lived almost
as secluded a life as one of the neighboring monks of St. Mary's Priory.

Crosbey-Holt, their new home, was different enough from Falworth or
Easterbridge Castle, the former baronial seats of Lord Falworth. It was
a long, low, straw-thatched farm-house, once, when the church lands
were divided into two holdings, one of the bailiff's houses. All around
were the fruitful farms of the priory, tilled by well-to-do tenant holders,
and rich with fields of waving grain, and meadow-lands where sheep
and cattle grazed in flocks and herds; for in those days the church lands
were under church rule, and were governed by church laws, and there,
when war and famine and waste and sloth blighted the outside world,
harvests flourished and were gathered, and sheep were sheared and
cows were milked in peace and quietness.
The Prior of St. Mary's owed much if not all of the church's prosperity
to the blind Lord Falworth, and now he was paying it back with a
haven of refuge from the ruin that his former patron had brought upon
himself by giving shelter to Sir John Dale.
I fancy that most boys do not love the grinding of school life--the
lessons to be conned, the close application during study hours. It is not
often pleasant to brisk, lively lads to be so cooped up. I wonder what
the boys of to-day would have thought of Myles's training. With him
that training was not only of the mind, but of the body as well, and for
seven years it was almost unremitting. "Thou hast thine own way to
make in the world, sirrah," his father said more than once when the boy
complained of the grinding hardness of his life, and to make one's way
in those days meant a thousand times more than it does now; it meant
not only a heart to feel and a brain to think, but a hand quick and strong
to strike in battle, and a body tough to endure the wounds and blows in
return. And so it was that Myles's body as well as his mind had to be
trained to meet the needs of the dark age in which he lived.
Every morning, winter or summer, rain or shine he tramped away six
long miles to the priory school, and in the evenings his mother taught
him French.
Myles, being prejudiced in the school of thought of his day, rebelled
not a little at that last branch of his studies. "Why must I learn that