nd ragged, that they were more like beasts of the wood than
human beings.

"What is this?" asked Knolles. "Have I not ordered you to leave the
countryfolk at peace?"

The leader of the archers, old Wat of Carlisle, held up a sword, a
girdle and a dagger. "If it please you, fair sir," said he, "I saw the
glint of these, and I thought them no fit tools for hands which were
made for the spade and the plow. But when we had ridden them down and
taken them, there was the Bentley cross upon each, and we knew that they
had belonged to yonder dead Englishman upon the road. Surely then, these
are two of the villains who have slain him, and it is right that we do
justice upon them."

Sure enough, upon sword, girdle and dagger shone the silver Molene cross
which had gleamed on the dead man's armor. Knolles looked at them and
then at the prisoners with a face of stone. At the sight of those
fell eyes they had dropped with inarticulate howls upon their knees,
screaming out their protests in a tongue which none could understand.

"We must have the roads safe for wandering Englishmen," said Knolles.
"These men must surely die. Hang them to yonder tree."

He pointed to a live-oak by the roadside, and rode onward upon his way
in converse with his fellow-knights. But the old bowman had ridden after
him.

"If it please you, Sir Robert, the bowmen would fain put these men to
death in their own fashion," said he.

"So that they die, I care not how," Knolles answered carelessly, and
looked back no more.

Human life was cheap in those stern days when the footmen of a stricken
army or the crew of a captured ship were slain without any question or
thought of mercy by the victors. War was a rude game with death for the
stake, and the forfeit was always claimed on the one side and paid on
the other without doubt or hesitation. Only the knight might be spared,
since his ransom made him worth more alive than dead. To men trained in
such a school, with death forever hanging over their own heads, it may
be well believed that the slaying of two peasant murderers was a small
matter.

And yet there was special reason why upon this occasion the bowmen
wished to keep the deed in their own hands. Ever since their dispute
aboard the Basilisk, there had been ill-feeling betwixt Bartholomew the
old bald-headed bowyer, and long Ned Widdington the Dalesman, which had
ended in a conflict at Dinan, in which not only they, but a dozen of
their friends h