Though more crests are blazoned nowadays than there are minutes in which the heralds may count them, yet old families still live, with roots deep down in rural England\'s soil, and nourish in quiet legends which, when they come to notice, are the fairest flowers in the garden of English folk-lore.

Such a tale the Tambows of Shropshire can tell. Once, it is dimly understood, the narrative was written out, and even printed from types in Caxton\'s own press. If this be true, the book has long been lost. But the story is worth keeping.

Dickon looked at this time to be well on in his teens. He was so tall and stout a lad that grown men spoke to him, now and again, as to one of themselves. Just what his age might be, however, it lay beyond mortal power to discover. His mother was long since dead. His native hamlet had been wiped by fire and sword from the face of the earth.

His father could remember nothing more of Dickon\'s birth than that it was either just before the Battle of Bloreheath in Stafford, or soon after the fierce fight at Mortimer\'s Cross in Hereford. The one would make him sixteen years old, the other scarcely more than fourteen. Whether it was sixteen or fourteen no living soul in England cared.

There was as yet no other name for him than Dickon—that is to say, any securely fastened name. He had been called Smithson, and even Smith, by word of mouth among strangers. But the rough men close at hand commonly hailed him with oaths, which pointed to no surname whatever. Indeed, surnames were matters strictly for his betters—for gentlefolk, or at the least for thrifty yeomen with a dozen cows or fourscore sheep on a walk.

There could never have been a thought, therefore, in Dickon\'s head as to what name was likest to stick to him, since of all unlabelled hinds in Salop surely he was the lowliest.

Thought, in truth, is an over-fine word for aught that went forward in Dickon\'s brain. He knew only some few things more clearly than did the horses and dogs about him.

He did know, first of all, that his grim master, who lived up in the castle just above, was named Sir Watty Curdle, and that the castle itself was Egswith. That he was Sir Watty\'s man was by far the most important thing there was for him to know; and that it might be kept always fresh before his eyes and patent to all others, this lord\'s device of two running hares, back to back, one turned upside down, was sewed upon the breast of Dickon\'s leather jerkin.

Dickon had more reasons for holding his master to be a foul ruffian and robber than the dumb brutes in stable and kennel could have possessed, though doubtless they, too, were of the same opinion. He knew, furthermore, that the king was a tall and fine young man, because he had seen him after Tewksbury. He knew that the Lady Curdle came from Cheshire, which was reputed to lie northward.

He knew that all men-at-arms who wore three stags\' heads on their jackets were his natural enemies; and that it was thought better to be a soldier than the son of a smith. Sometimes he thought that it must be better to be dead than either.

Dickon\'s belongings were all on his back. He owned a thick shirt of rough woollen, which had been his share of the spoil of a Yorkist archer, slain the year before in a fray on Craven highroad. Formerly the lad had been harassed by dreams that the dead man, all shivering and frosted over, had come back for his shirt, but these dreams were past long since, and he wore the shirt now like a second skin, so wholly did it seem a part of him.

Over this shirt was drawn his leather tunic, which was becoming too tight. Under this were fastened with cowhide thongs the points of his old leathern hose, also strained now almost to bursting. His shoes were rude and worn contrivances of leather, bound on over ankle and instep with cords. His neck and tangled shock of yellow hair were hidden under a caped hood of coarse brown cloth.

In these garments he toiled miserably by day; in them he slept in his cold corner of the smithy floor by night. By night and day the solitary aspiration of his mind was for the time when he might escape his fathers curses and beatings, and bear a spear among the men-at-arms.

This chance came to him suddenly, on a December day, when the air over the Marches was so thick and gray and cold that men desired to fight, if only to keep their blood from chilling within them. Out of this chance proceeded strange things, the legend of which has lived these hundreds of years in Salop.

Sir Watty Curdle did what he dared toward being a law to himself. In the fastness of the Welsh mountains, just back of his domain, there were always whisperings of new Lancastrian plots and bold adventures. These drifted to Egswith Castle, on its steep, ugly crag, and made an atmosphere of treason there which hung over the Marches like a fog.

That Sir Watty had a rushlight\'s choice between King Edward and Queen Margaret no one ever believed. If it had suited his ends he would as easily have been the king\'s man. But since the hated Stanleys were cheek by jowl with the king, there could be nothing for Sir Watty but the other side.

Besides, he had grievances. That is to say, other gentlemen in the countryside had houses and fair daughters and plate and fat cattle. These things rankled in Sir Watty\'s mind.

Sir Watty rose on this December morning with his head clear from a month\'s carouse, with his muscles itching for sharp work, and with the eager sniff of rapine in his nostrils.

Word that sport was afoot ran presently about through the galleries and yards and clustering outer hovels within the high-perched walls of Egswith. Rough, brawny men forthwith dragged out haubergeons and sallets, and leathern jackets stuffed with wool, and smiled grimly over them and put them on.

Two troopers in sleeveless coats of plate mail, and heavy greaves and boots, came clanking down the jagged hill-path. They routed with loud halloos the threescore people who dwelt in the foul and toppling huts huddled at the foot of the crag, under the shadow of gray Egswith.

"Ho! Ho-o!" they bawled. "Out with you—out! out! Your lord rides to-day!"

A bustling crowd arose on the instant. Strong men swarmed in the open. Some were sent into the fields with horns to summon yokels who were grubbing among the roots. Others haled forth armor and saddle-gear, and bows and spears, and shouted joyous quips from group to group.

Dull-browed women, with backs bent like beasts of burden, brought food and hoods and such tackle at command, in sulky silence. Half-clad children hung about the doorways, gazing wonderingly. From the castle gates some horses were being led out; and about the high walls rang the shrill blare of trumpet-calls.

The two troopers, after setting all in motion outside, clanked their way into the smithy, and the black one, Morgan, he with a brutish face, seamed and gashed with red scars,—where only one eye remained to glare in rude arrogance,—kicked the door open, and cried out as he did so:

"Are you dead here, then? What are your ears for, fools? And no fire!"

Dickon crossed the floor of the smithy, and stood before the intruders.

"The old man will light fires no more," he said, with dogged indifference, pointing a sidelong thumb to the bundle of straw at the tail of the forge, beneath the bellows.

There, flat on his back, lay the smith, with wide-open, staring eyes, and a face of greenish-brazen hue; his huge grizzled beard spread stiffly outward like the bristling collar of some unclean giant vulture.

"He was ever a surly swine," Morgan growled. "Even as we need him most, he fails us thus!"

Dickon offered no opinion upon this. "It fell on him in the night," he said.

Morgan leant over as far as his iron casings permitted, to note what share of breath remained in the smith\'s body. Then he rose, and looked the lad from top to toe with his sullen single eye.

"Get you into his foot-gear, then, and follow on," he snarled curtly.

Then for the first time the other man-at-arms spoke. He was a huge, reddish warrior, with the shoulders of an ox, and a face which flamed forth from out the casings of his head-piece like a setting winter sun.

"Were it not better to leave him?" this Rawly asked. "If he chance to get his head broken, how will Sir Watty make shift for a smith?"

Morgan sneered this down. "The lout hath not the wit for the tenth part of a smith," he sai............