Moon" was situated.

CHAPTER XXII. HOW THE BOWMEN HELD WASSAIL AT THE "ROSE DE GUIENNE."

"Mon Dieu! Alleyne, saw you ever so lovely a face?" cried Ford as they
hurried along together. "So pure, so peaceful, and so beautiful!"

"In sooth, yes. And the hue of the skin the most perfect that ever I
saw. Marked you also how the hair curled round the brow? It was wonder
fine."

"Those eyes, too!" cried Ford. "How clear and how tender--simple, and
yet so full of thought!"

"If there was a weakness it was in the chin," said Alleyne.

"Nay. I saw none."

"It was well curved, it is true."

"Most daintily so."

"And yet----"

"What then, Alleyne? Wouldst find flaw in the sun?"

"Well, bethink you, Ford, would not more power and expression have been
put into the face by a long and noble beard?"

"Holy Virgin!" cried Ford, "the man is mad. A beard on the face of
little Tita!"

"Tita! Who spoke of Tita?"

"Who spoke of aught else?"

"It was the picture of St. Remi, man, of which I have been discoursing."

"You are indeed," cried Ford, laughing, "a Goth, Hun, and Vandal, with
all the other hard names which the old man called us. How could you
think so much of a smear of pigments, when there was such a picture
painted by the good God himself in the very room with you? But who is
this?"

"If it please you, sirs," said an archer, running across to them,
"Aylward and others would be right glad to see you. They are within
here. He bade me say to you that the Lord Loring will not need your
service to-night, as he sleeps with the Lord Chandos."

"By my faith!" said Ford, "we do not need a guide to lead us to their
presence." As he spoke there came a roar of singing from the tavern upon
the right, with shouts of laughter and stamping of feet. Passing under
a low door, and down a stone-flagged passage, they found themselves in a
long narrow hall lit up by a pair of blazing torches, one at either end.
Trusses of straw had been thrown down along the walls, and reclining on
them were some twenty or thirty archers, all of the Company, their
steel caps and jacks thrown off, their tunics open and their great limbs
sprawling upon the clay floor. At every man's elbow stood his leathern
blackjack of beer, while at the further end a hogshead with its end
knocked in promised an abundant supply for the future. Behind the
hogshead, on a half circle of kegs, boxes, and rude settles, sat
Aylward, John, Black Simon and three or