ck, with a flash
of his half-opened eye.

"Ay, be silent--be silent!" said the King. "We do not see such shooting
every day."

Now Dick set his foot apart and, arrow on string, thrice he lifted his
bow and thrice let it sink again, perhaps because he felt some breath
of wind stir the still air. A fourth time he lifted, and drew, not as he
had before, but straight to the ear, then loosed at once.

Away rushed the yard-long shaft, and folk noted that it scarcely seemed
to rise as arrows do, or at least not half so high. It rushed, it smote,
and there was silence, for none could see exactly what had happened.
Then he who stood near the target to mark ran forward, and screamed out:

"By God's name, he has shattered Jack Green's centre arrow, and shot
_clean through the clout!_"

Then from all sides rose the old archer cry, "_He, He! He, He!_" while
the young Prince threw his cap on high, and the King said:

"Would that there were more such men as this in England! Jack Green, it
seems that you are beaten."

"Nay," said Grey Dick, seating himself again upon the grass, "there is
naught to choose between us in this round. What next, your Grace?"

Only Hugh, who watched him, saw the big veins swell beneath the pale
skin of his forehead, as they ever did when he was moved.

"The war game," said the King; "that is, if you will, for here rough
knocks may be going. Set it out, one of you."

Then a captain of the archers explained this sport. In short it was
that man should stand against man clad in leather jerkins, and wearing
a vizor to protect the face, and shoot at each other with blunt arrows
rubbed with chalk, he who first took what would have been a mortal wound
to be held worsted.

"I like not blunted arrows," said Grey Dick; "or, for the matter of
that, any other arrows save my own. Against how many must I play? The
three?"

The captain nodded.

"Then, by your leave, I will take them all at once."

Now some said that this was not fair, but in the end Dick won his point,
and those archers whom he had beaten, among them Jack Green, were placed
against him, standing five yards apart, and blunted arrows served out
to all. Dick set one of them on the string, and laid the two others in
front of them. Then a knight rode to halfway between them, but a little
to one side, and shouted: "Loose!"

As the word struck his ear Dick shot with wonderful swiftness, and
almost as the arrow left the bow flung himself down, gr