ever a bullock on the
farm was sold more lightly. Ha! he may wake some black night to find
the flames licking about his ears--for fire is a good friend to the
poor man, and I have seen a smoking heap of ashes where over night there
stood just such another castlewick as Ashby."

"This is a lad of mettle!" shouted another of the laborers. "He dares to
give tongue to what all men think. Are we not all from Adam's loins, all
with flesh and blood, and with the same mouth that must needs have food
and drink? Where all this difference then between the ermine cloak and
the leathern tunic, if what they cover is the same?"

"Aye, Jenkin," said another, "our foeman is under the stole and the
vestment as much as under the helmet and plate of proof. We have as much
to fear from the tonsure as from the hauberk. Strike at the noble and
the priest shrieks, strike at priest and the noble lays his hand upon
glaive. They are twin thieves who live upon our labor."

"It would take a clever man to live upon thy labor, Hugh," remarked one
of the foresters, "seeing that the half of thy time is spent in swilling
mead at the 'Pied Merlin.'"

"Better that than stealing the deer that thou art placed to guard, like
some folk I know."

"If you dare open that swine's mouth against me," shouted the woodman,
"I'll crop your ears for you before the hangman has the doing of it,
thou long-jawed lackbrain."

"Nay, gentles, gentles!" cried Dame Eliza, in a singsong heedless voice,
which showed that such bickerings were nightly things among her guests.
"No brawling or brabbling, gentles! Take heed to the good name of the
house."

"Besides, if it comes to the cropping of ears, there are other folk who
may say their say," quoth the third laborer. "We are all freemen, and
I trow that a yeoman's cudgel is as good as a forester's knife. By
St. Anselm! it would be an evil day if we had to bend to our master's
servants as well as to our masters."

"No man is my master save the King," the woodman answered. "Who is
there, save a false traitor, who would refuse to serve the English
king?"

"I know not about the English king," said the man Jenkin. "What sort of
English king is it who cannot lay his tongue to a word of English? You
mind last year when he came down to Malwood, with his inner marshal and
his outer marshal, his justiciar, his seneschal, and his four and twenty
guardsmen. One noontide I was by Franklin Swinton's gate, when up he
rides with a yeo