rl! Why should you give way to these
mad islanders? Ah, cospetto! we are ruined and destroyed!"

The crowd had thickened in front, so that the lame man and the girl had
come to a stand. Several half-drunken English archers, attracted, as
the squires had been, by their singular appearance, were facing towards
them, and peering at them through the dim light.

"By the three kings!" cried one, "here is an old dotard shrew to have
so goodly a crutch! Use the leg that God hath given you, man, and do not
bear so heavily upon the wench."

"Twenty devils fly away with him!" shouted another. "What, how, man!
are brave archers to go maidless while an old man uses one as a
walking-staff?"

"Come with me, my honey-bird!" cried a third, plucking at the girl's
mantle.

"Nay, with me, my heart's desire!" said the first. "By St. George! our
life is short, and we should be merry while we may. May I never see
Chester Bridge again, if she is not a right winsome lass!"

"What hath the old toad under his arm?" cried one of the others. "He
hugs it to him as the devil hugged the pardoner."

"Let us see, old bag of bones; let us see what it is that you have
under your arm!" They crowded in upon him, while he, ignorant of their
language, could but clutch the girl with one hand and the parcel with
the other, looking wildly about in search of help.

"Nay, lads, nay!" cried Ford, pushing back the nearest archer. "This
is but scurvy conduct. Keep your hands off, or it will be the worse for
you."

"Keep your tongue still, or it will be the worse for you," shouted the
most drunken of the archers. "Who are you to spoil sport?"

"A raw squire, new landed," said another. "By St. Thomas of Kent! we are
at the beck of our master, but we are not to be ordered by every babe
whose mother hath sent him as far as Aquitaine."

"Oh, gentlemen," cried the girl in broken French, "for dear Christ's
sake stand by us, and do not let these terrible men do us an injury."

"Have no fears, lady," Alleyne answered. "We shall see that all is
well with you. Take your hand from the girl's wrist, you north-country
rogue!"

"Hold to her, Wat!" said a great black-bearded man-at-arms, whose steel
breast-plate glimmered in the dusk. "Keep your hands from your bodkins,
you two, for that was my trade before you were born, and, by God's soul!
I will drive a handful of steel through you if you move a finger."

"Thank God!" said Alleyne suddenly, as he spied in the lam