Together
the two rummaged forgotten shelves and chests, and found forgotten
things. That which had drawn the boy from the first always drew and
absorbed him--the annals of his own people. Many a long winter evening
the pair turned over the pages of volumes and of parchment, and followed
with eager interest and curiosity the records of wild lives--stories of
warriors and abbots and bards, of feudal lords at ruthless war with
each other, of besiegings and battles and captives and torments. Legends
there were of small kingdoms torn asunder, of the slaughter of their
kings, the mad fightings of their barons, and the faith or unfaith of
their serfs. Here and there the eternal power revealed itself in some
story of lawful or unlawful love--for dame or damsel, royal lady,
abbess, or high-born nun--ending in the welding of two lives or in
rapine, violence, and death. There were annals of early England, and of
marauders, monks, and Danes. And, through all these, some thing, some
man or woman, place, or strife linked by some tie with Mount Dunstan
blood. In past generations, it seemed plain, there had been certain
of the line who had had pride in these records, and had sought and
collected them; then had been born others who had not cared.
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