ing them by their sword-belts, there broke out on the
stillness of the night a loon's cry, from beyond some bushes by a narrow
pond. We were lying outside under the overhanging front roof of the
inn. We crept through the door, our swords in our hands, and each man
hastily buckled on his armour. When we were ready we turned. Before the
fire stood some twelve mail-clad men, with curious helmets and coverings
for their elbows, and their swords were long, reaching from their
shoulders to the floor. We stood looking each other in the face for a
long time, then we backed slowly to the door and out of it, still gazing
at them, into the pale uncertain light of the watery dawn, leaving them
standing there in front of the glowing embers. We stole toward the
narrow path in the growing light, and waited there in the bushes for
sound from the house, our cross-bows strung. At last, as we waited and
watched, a crouching figure ran hastily round the corner of the house to
the doorway. After this we waited for a very long time till the east was
all gold, then suddenly a file of men, in plate to the waist, with long
bows in their hands, stepped forth from the bushes on either side of the
door.

Men who had grown up on these ravaged vinelands, and who had come from
nowhere on vengeance they were; and as they grouped themselves around
the corner of the house a sudden flare of red came through the doorway,
and we could hear the crackling of lit wood from inside. Then there were
shouts from our men in the upper chambers, and we heard their steel
shoes on the stone stairway. There came the clank of steel on steel, and
the steps on the stairway ceased. Now the smoke came from the windows in
the upper chamber, and in a moment we heard a great rush across the
upper floor--a rush that ended in falling bodies, and yells, and the
breaking of wood, and three of our men broke through the doorway. In a
moment they were down, each man with a goose-shaft in him. The bowmen
closed in the doorway, and the house was filled with a roaring as of
bulls, and the clanking as of a thousand anvils in caves; and the flames
poured from the chimney. Now came the old woman who always grinned,
rushing out through the doorway, but as she came, one of the
men-at-arms who stood behind the others raised his bow, and she fell
kicking over the pot-helm of one of our men. Last, came six more of our
men, their clothes singed off outside their armour, and their faces deep
red.