The White Wolf | Page 3

the Knight Borre, of Egeskov, of whom I am to tell; and with
them went all the crew of verderers, huntsmen, grooms, prickers, and
ostringers that had kept Nebbegaard cheerful the year round. His
mother had died at my master's birth, and the knight himself but two
years after, so that the lad grew up in his poverty with no heritage but a
few barren acres of sand, a tumbling house, and his father's sword, and
small prospect of winning the broad lands out of Borre's clutches.
Nevertheless, under my tutoring he grew into a tall lad and a bold, a
good swordsman, skilful at the tilt and in handling a boat; but not
talkative or free in his address of strangers. The most of his days he
spent in fishing, or in the making and mending of gear; and his
evenings, after our lesson in sword-play, in the reading of books (of
which Nebbegaard had good store), and specially of the Icelanders,

skalds and sagamen; also at times in the study of Latin with me, who
had been bred to the priesthood, but left it for love of his father, my
foster-brother, and now had no ambition of my own but to serve this
lad and make him as good a man.
But there were days when he would have naught to do with fishing or
with books; dark days when I forbore and left him to mope by the
dunes, or in the great garden which had been his mother's, but was now
a wilderness untended. And it was then that he first met with the lady
Mette.
For as he walked there one morning, a little before noon, a swift
shadow passed overhead between him and the sun, and almost before
he could glance upward a body came dropping out of the sky and fell
with a thud among the rose-bushes by the eastern wall. It was a heron,
and after it swooped the bird which had murdered it; a white ger-falcon
of the kind which breeds in Greenland, but a trained bird, as he knew
by the sound of the bells on her legs as she plunged through the bushes.
Ebbe ran at once to the corner where the birds struggled; but as he
picked up the pelt he happened to glance towards the western wall, and
in the gateway there stood a maiden with her hand on the bridle of a
white palfrey. Her dog came running towards Ebbe as he stood. He beat
it off, and carrying the pelt across to its mistress, waited a moment
silently, cap in hand, while she called the great falcon back to its lure
and leashed it to her wrist, which seemed all too slight for the weight.
Then, as Ebbe held out the dead heron, she shook her head and laughed.
"I am not sure, sir, that I have any right to it. We flushed it yonder
between the wood and the sandhills, and, though I did not stay to
consider, I think it must belong to the owner of the shore-land."
"It is true," said Ebbe, "that I own the shore-land, and the forest, too, if
law could enforce right. But for the bird you are welcome to it, and to
as many more as you care to kill."
Upon this she knit her brows. "The forest? But I thought that the forest
was my father's? My name," said she, "is Mette, and my father is the
Knight Borre, of Egeskov."

"I am Ebbe of Nebbegaard, and," said he, perceiving the mirth in her
eyes, "you have heard the rhyme upon me--
"'Ebbe from Nebbe, with all his men good, Has neither food nor
firing-wood.'"
"I had not meant to be discourteous," said she contritely; "but tell me
more of these forest-lands."
"Nay," answered Ebbe, "hither comes riding your father with his men.
Ask him for the story, and when he has told it you may know why I
cannot make him or his daughter welcome at Nebbegaard."
To this she made no reply, but with her hand on the palfrey's bridle
went slowly back to meet her father, who reined up at a little distance
and waited, offering Ebbe no salutation. Then a groom helped her to
the saddle, and the company rode away towards Egeskov, leaving the
lad with the dead bird in his hand.
For weeks after this meeting he moped more than usual. He had known
before that Sir Borre would leave no son, and that the lands of
Nebbegaard, if ever to be won back, must be wrested from a
woman--and this had ever troubled him. It troubled me the less because
I hoped there might be another way than force; and even if it should
come to that, Sir Borre's past treachery