e prostrate cripple, and Nigel
with foot and sword upon his body.

"Your book, father!" cried Nigel. "I know not if what we do is good or
ill; but we must wed them, for there is no way out."

But the girl by the table had given a great cry, and she was clinging
and sobbing with her arms round her sister's neck.

"Oh, Mary, I thank the Virgin that you have come! I thank the Virgin
that it is not too late! What did he say? He said that he was a de la
Fosse and that he would not be married at the sword-point. My heart went
out to him when he said it. But I, am I not a Buttesthorn, and shall it
be said that I would marry a man who could be led to the altar with a
knife at his throat? No, no, I see him as he is! I know him now, the
mean spirit, the lying tongue! Can I not read in his eyes that he has
indeed deceived me, that he would have left me as you say that he has
left others? Take me home, Mary, my sister, for you have plucked me back
this night from the very mouth of Hell!"

And so it was that the master of Shalford, livid and brooding, was left
with his wine at his lonely table, while the golden beauty of Cosford,
hot with shame and anger, her fair face wet with tears, passed out safe
from the house of infamy into the great calm and peace of the starry
night.

XIII. HOW THE COMRADES JOURNEYED DOWN THE OLD, OLD ROAD

And now the season of the moonless nights was drawing nigh and the
King's design was ripe. Very secretly his preparations were made.
Already the garrison of Calais, which consisted of five hundred archers
and two hundred men-at-arms, could, if forewarned, resist any attack
made upon it. But it was the King's design not merely to resist the
attack, but to capture the attackers. Above all it was his wish to find
the occasion for one of those adventurous passages of arms which had
made his name famous throughout Christendom as the very pattern and
leader of knight-errant chivalry.

But the affair wanted careful handling. The arrival of any,
reinforcements, or even the crossing of any famous soldier, would have
alarmed the French and warned them that their plot had been discovered.
Therefore it was in twos and threes in the creyers and provision ships
which were continually passing from shore to shore that the chosen
warriors and their squires were brought to Calais. There they were
passed at night through the water-gate into the castle where they could
lie hidden, unknown to the townsfolk, un