dered town. High silken pavilions or colored
marquees, shooting up from among the crowd of meaner dwellings, marked
where the great lords and barons of Leon and Castile displayed their
standards, while over the white roofs, as far as eye could reach, the
waving of ancients, pavons, pensils, and banderoles, with flash of gold
and glow of colors, proclaimed that all the chivalry of Iberia were
mustered in the plain beneath them. Far off, in the centre of the camp,
a huge palace of red and white silk, with the royal arms of Castile
waiving from the summit, announced that the gallant Henry lay there in
the midst of his warriors.

As the English adventurers, peeping out from behind their brushwood
screen, looked down upon this wondrous sight they could see that the
vast army in front of them was already afoot. The first pink light of
the rising sun glittered upon the steel caps and breastplates of dense
masses of slingers and of crossbowmen, who drilled and marched in the
spaces which had been left for their exercise. A thousand columns of
smoke reeked up into the pure morning air where the faggots were piled
and the camp-kettles already simmering. In the open plain clouds of
light horse galloped and swooped with swaying bodies and waving
javelins, after the fashion which the Spanish had adopted from their
Moorish enemies. All along by the sedgy banks of the rivers long lines
of pages led their masters' chargers down to water, while the knights
themselves lounged in gayly-dressed groups about the doors of their
pavilions, or rode out, with their falcons upon their wrists and their
greyhounds behind them, in quest of quail or of leveret.

"By my hilt! mon gar.!" whispered Aylward to Alleyne, as the young
squire stood with parted lips and wondering eyes, gazing down at the
novel scene before him, "we have been seeking them all night, but now
that we have found them I know not what we are to do with them."

"You say sooth, Samkin," quoth old Johnston. "I would that we were upon
the far side of Ebro again, for there is neither honor nor profit to be
gained here. What say you, Simon?"

"By the rood!" cried the fierce man-at-arms, "I will see the color of
their blood ere I turn my mare's head for the mountains. Am I a child,
that I should ride for three days and nought but words at the end of
it?"

"Well said, my sweet honeysuckle!" cried Hordle John. "I am with you,
like hilt to blade. Could I but lay hands upon one of thos