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"Nothing," Eleanor answered, swallowing with some difficulty and winking very fast, "but I don't think I care to hunt any more to-day, father. Will you please take Mabonde?" The knight's eyebrows lifted rather quizzically, but he did not question this sudden decision. "Ride with me instead, daughter," he said kindly, and Eleanor, very subdued and thoughtful, paced along by her father's side.

The bright-eyed sleek-plumaged Mabonde had been her pet for weeks, and would already answer her call and eat from her hand. She looked forward happily to riding forth some day with the falcon perched on her small gloved fist, alert for flight.

But on the way to the marsh the knight and the Prior paid little attention to the diversion of falconry. They were deep in consideration of the best way to drain the swamp and deal with it generally. Eleanor's heart beat fast as they neared the heronry. It was not a heron, however, which claimed the maiden flight of Mabonde. It was a woodcock flushed in the edge of a copse.

And now she was setting Mabonde to kill those dainty chicks for her own pleasure! Roger had gone off with the squires after a tercel of which great things were expected, but Sir Walter Giffard, coming up just then, caught sight of his daughter's woe-begone face. "What is the matter, my little maid?" he asked.

The truth was that Eleanor had never thought of Mabonde as a cruel bird. It was the nature of a falcon to kill its own food. The spice of danger in the keen talons and fierce beak made her pet even a little more fascinating. But it seemed different, somehow, when she herself sent the merlin forth to kill.