pricked forward, the woman
sprang as light as a leopard on to the saddle behind the foeman, and
wound her arms about him and dragged him back just as he was raising
his axe to smite her, and as Ralph rode forward she cried out to him,
"Smite him, smite! O lovely creature of God!"

Therewith was Ralph beside them, and though he were loth to slay a man
held in the arms of a woman, yet he feared lest the man should slay her
with some knife-stroke unless he made haste; so he thrust his sword
through him, and the man died at once, and fell headlong off his horse,
dragging down the woman with him.

Then Ralph lighted down from his horse, and the woman rose up to him,
her white smock all bloody with the slain man. Nevertheless was she as
calm and stately before him, as if she were sitting on the dais of a
fair hall; so she said to him:

"Young warrior, thou hast done well and knightly, and I shall look to
it that thou have thy reward. And now I rede thee go not to the Burg
of the Four Friths; for this tale of thee shall get about and they
shall take thee, if it were out of the very Frith-stool, and there for
thee should be the scourge and the gibbet; for they of that Burg be
robbers and murderers merciless. Yet well it were that thou ride hence
presently; for those be behind my tormentors whom thou hast slain, who
will be as an host to thee, and thou mayst not deal with them. If thou
follow my rede, thou wilt take the way that goeth hence east away, and
then shalt thou come to Hampton under Scaur, where the folk are
peaceable and friendly."

He looked at her hard as she spake, and noted that she spake but
slowly, and turned red and white and red again as she looked at him.
But whatever she did, and in spite of her poor attire, he deemed he had
never seen woman so fair. Her hair was dark red, but her eyes grey,
and light at whiles and yet at whiles deep; her lips betwixt thin and
full, but yet when she spoke or smiled clad with all enticements; her
chin round and so wrought as none was ever better wrought; her body
strong and well-knit; tall she was, with fair and large arms, and limbs
most goodly of fashion, of which but little was hidden, since her coat
was but thin and scanty. But whatever may be said of her, no man would
have deemed her aught save most lovely. Now her face grew calm and
stately again as it was at the first, and she laid a hand on Ralph's
shoulder, and smiled in his face and said:

"Surely tho