y, but upon the edge of the forest Beltane stopped of a
sudden to stare up at an adjacent tree.

"What is't, master?" questioned Roger, halting beside him.

"An arrow--and new-shot by the look of it!" said Beltane, gloomily.

"Aye master, and it hath travelled far--see, it hath scarce pierced the
bark!"

"'Twas shot from the brush yonder, methinks," said Beltane, pointing to
the dense underwood that skirted the opposite side of the dusty
highway. "Reach me it down, Roger!" so saying Beltane stooped and hove
Roger aloft until he could grasp and draw the arrow from the tree.

"Here is no woodsman's shaft, master!" quoth Roger, turning the missile
over in his hand ere he gave it to Beltane, "no forester doth wing his
shafts so."

"True!" nodded Beltane, frowning at the arrow. "Walkyn, Ulf! here hath
been an ambushment, methinks--'tis a likely place for such. Let our
company scatter and search amid the fern hereabouts--"

But even as he spake came a cry, a clamour of voices, and Prat the
archer came frowning and snapping his restless fingers.

"My lord," said he, "yonder doth lie my good comrade Martin and three
other fellows of my archer-company that marched with Sir Benedict, and
all dead, lord, slain by arrows all four."

"Show me!" said Beltane.

And when he had viewed and touched those stark and pallid forms that
lay scattered here and there amid the bracken, his anxious frown
deepened. "These have been dead men full six hours!" quoth he.

"Aye, lord," says Prat, "and 'tis unmeet such good fellows should lie
here for beasts to tear; shall we bury them?"

"Not so!" answered Beltane, turning away. "Take their shafts and fall
to your ranks--we must march forthright!"

Thus soon the three hundred were striding fast behind Beltane, keeping
ever to the forest yet well within bow-shot of the road, and, though
they travelled at speed they went very silently, as only foresters
might.

In a while Beltane brought them to those high wooded banks betwixt
which the road ran winding down to Thornaby Ford--that self-same hilly
road where, upon a time, the Red Pertolepe had surprised the lawless
company of Gilles of Brandonmere; and, now as then, the dark defile was
littered with the wrack of fight, fallen charges that kicked and
snorted in their pain or lay mute and still, men in battered harness
that stared up from the dust, all unseeing, upon the new day. They lay
thick within the sunken road but thicker beside the