weet and kind, and the smile was answered back in a way so
quaintly like to her father's face, that I too smiled for goodwill and
pleasure.

"Well, well, lass," said he, "dost thou think that here is Crecy field
toward, that ye bring all this artillery? Turn back, my girl, and set
the pot on the fire; for that shall we need when we come home, I and
this ballad-maker here."

"Nay," she said, nodding kindly at me, "if this is to be no Crecy, then
may I stop to see, as well as the ballad-maker, since he hath neither
sword nor staff?"

"Sweetling," he said, "get thee home in haste. This play is but
little, yet mightest thou be hurt in it; and trust me the time may
come, sweetheart, when even thou and such as thou shalt hold a sword or
a staff. Ere the moon throws a shadow we shall be back."

She turned away lingering, not without tears on her face, laid the
sheaf of arrows at the foot of the tree, and hastened off through the
orchard. I was going to say something, when Will Green held up his
hand as who would bid us hearken. The noise of the horse-hoofs, after
growing nearer and nearer, had ceased suddenly, and a confused murmur
of voices had taken the place of it.

"Get thee down, and take cover, old lad," said Will Green; "the dance
will soon begin, and ye shall hear the music presently."

Sure enough as I slipped down by the hedge close to which I had been
standing, I heard the harsh twang of the bow-strings, one, two, three,
almost together, from the road, and even the whew of the shafts, though
that was drowned in a moment by a confused but loud and threatening
shout from the other side, and again the bowstrings clanged, and this
time a far-off clash of arms followed, and therewithal that cry of a
strong man that comes without his will, and is so different from his
wonted voice that one has a guess thereby of the change that death is.
Then for a while was almost silence; nor did our horns blow up, though
some half-dozen of the billmen had leapt into the road when the bows
first shot. But presently came a great blare of trumpets and horns
from the other side, and therewith as it were a river of steel and
bright coats poured into the field before us, and still their horns
blew as they spread out toward the left of our line; the cattle in the
pasture-field, heretofore feeding quietly, seemed frightened silly by
the sudden noise, and ran about tail in air and lowing loudly; the old
bull with his head a little