men on the plain.
'Lights out,' said Richard, and gave Jehane a kiss as he set her down.
They blew out all the lights, and stood two to each door; no one spoke
any more. Jehane sat by the darkened fire with a torch in her hand,
ready to light it when she was bid.

Thus when the Normans drew near they found the tower true to its name,
without a glimmer of light. 'Let alone for that,' said the King, whose
grating voice they heard above all the others; 'very soon we will have a
fire.' He sent some of his men to gather brushwood, ling, and dead
bracken; meantime he began to beat at the door with his axe, crying like
a madman, 'Richard! Richard! Thou graceless wretch, come out of thy
hold.'

Presently a little window-casement opened above him; Gaston of Bearn
poked out his head.

'Beau sire,' he says, 'what entertainment is this for the Count your
son?'

'No son of mine, by the Face!' cried the King. 'Let that woman I have
caged at home answer for him, who defies me for ever. Let me in, thou
sickly dog.'

Gaston said, 'Beau sire, you shall come in if you will, and if you come
in peace.'

Says the King, 'I will come in, by God, and as I will.'

'Foul request, King,' said Gaston, and shut the window.

'Have it as you will; it shall be foul by and by,' the King shouted to
the night. He bid them fire the place.

To be short, they heaped a wood-stack before the door and set it ablaze.
The crackling, the tossed flames, the leaping light, made the King
drunk. He and his companions began capering about the fire with linked
arms, hounding each other on with the cries of countrymen who draw a
badger--'Loo, loo, Vixen! Slip in, lass! Hue, Brock, hue, hue!' and
similar gross noises, until for very shame Gilles and his kindred drew
apart, saying to each other, 'We have let all hell loose, Legion and his
minions.' So the two companies, the grievous and the aggrieved, were
separate; and Richard, seeing this state of the case, took Roussillon
and Beziers out by the other door, got behind the dancers, attacked
suddenly, and drove three of them into the fire. 'There,' says the
chronicler, 'the butcher Sir Rolf got a taste of his everlasting
torments, there FitzReinfrid lay and charred; there Ponce of Caen, ill
born, made a foul smoke as became him.' Turning to go in again, the
three were confronted with the Norman segregates. Great work ensued by
the light of the fire. Gilles the elder was slain with an axe, and if
with an axe, t