ave been his wisest
plan to have left these wild people to their own courses, but he had
been bred in almost reckless contempt of danger, and felt all the
eagerness of youthful curiosity.

The singular assemblage, both male and female, wore turbans and caps,
more similar in general appearance to his own bonnet than to the hats
commonly worn in France. Several of the men had curled black beards, and
the complexion of all was nearly as dark as that of Africans. One or two
who seemed their chiefs, had some tawdry ornaments of silver about their
necks and in their ears, and wore showy scarfs of yellow, or scarlet,
or light green; but their legs and arms were bare, and the whole troop
seemed wretched and squalid in appearance. There were no weapons among
them that Durward saw, except the long knives with which they had lately
menaced him, and one short, crooked sabre, or Moorish sword, which was
worn by an active looking young man, who often laid his hand upon
the hill, while he surpassed the rest of the party in his extravagant
expressions of grief, and seemed to mingle with them threats of
vengeance.

The disordered and yelling group were so different in appearance from
any beings whom Quentin had yet seen, that he was on the point of
concluding them to be a party of Saracens, of those "heathen hounds,"
who were the opponents of gentle knights and Christian monarchs in
all the romances which he had heard or read, and was about to withdraw
himself from a neighbourhood so perilous, when a galloping of horse was
heard, and the supposed Saracens, who had raised by this time the body
of their comrade upon their shoulders, were at once charged by a party
of French soldiers.

This sudden apparition changed the measured wailing of the mourners into
irregular shrieks of terror. The body was thrown to the ground in
an instant, and those who were around it showed the utmost and most
dexterous activity in escaping under the bellies as it were of the
horses, from the point of the lances which were levelled at them,
with exclamations of "Down with the accursed heathen thieves--take and
kill--bind them like beasts--spear them like wolves!"

These cries were accompanied with corresponding acts of violence; but
such was the alertness of the fugitives, the ground being rendered
unfavourable to the horsemen by thickets and bushes, that only two were
struck down and made prisoners, one of whom was the young fellow with
the sword, who had