ed merlin, and sat, brush in hand, staring
with open eyes at a type of man so strange and so unlike any whom he had
met. Men had been good or had been bad in his catalogue, but here was a
man who was fierce one instant and gentle the next, with a curse on his
lips and a smile in his eye. What was to be made of such a man as that?

It chanced that the soldier looked up and saw the questioning glance
which the young clerk threw upon him. He raised his flagon and drank to
him, with a merry flash of his white teeth.

"A toi, mon garcon," he cried. "Hast surely never seen a man-at-arms,
that thou shouldst stare so?"

"I never have," said Alleyne frankly, "though I have oft heard talk of
their deeds."

"By my hilt!" cried the other, "if you were to cross the narrow sea you
would find them as thick as bees at a tee-hole. Couldst not shoot a
bolt down any street of Bordeaux, I warrant, but you would pink archer,
squire, or knight. There are more breastplates than gaberdines to be
seen, I promise you."

"And where got you all these pretty things?" asked Hordle John, pointing
at the heap in the corner.

"Where there is as much more waiting for any brave lad to pick it up.
Where a good man can always earn a good wage, and where he need look
upon no man as his paymaster, but just reach his hand out and help
himself. Aye, it is a goodly and a proper life. And here I drink to
mine old comrades, and the saints be with them! Arouse all together,
me, enfants, under pain of my displeasure. To Sir Claude Latour and the
White Company!"

"Sir Claude Latour and the White Company!" shouted the travellers,
draining off their goblets.

"Well quaffed, mes braves! It is for me to fill your cups again, since
you have drained them to my dear lads of the white jerkin. Hola! mon
ange, bring wine and ale. How runs the old stave?--

We'll drink all together
To the gray goose feather
And the land where the gray goose flew."

He roared out the catch in a harsh, unmusical voice, and ended with a
shout of laughter. "I trust that I am a better bowman than a minstrel,"
said he.

"Methinks I have some remembrance of the lilt," remarked the gleeman,
running his fingers over the strings, "Hoping that it will give thee no
offence, most holy sir"--with a vicious snap at Alleyne--"and with the
kind permit of the company, I will even venture upon it."

Many a time in the after days Alleyne Edricson seemed to see that scene,