paye, who stood shaking
with fear, an abyss below him, and the voices of those who would hurl
him over it behind. There was a long pause before anyone would come
forth to dare those deadly arrows. Then a fellow, crouching double, ran
forward from the shelter, keeping the young archer's body as a shield
between him and danger.

"Aside, John! Aside!" cried his comrades from below.

The youth sprang as far as the rope would allow him, and slipped it half
over his face in the effort. Three arrows flashed past his side, and
two of them buried themselves in the body of the man behind. A howl of
delight burst from the spectators as he dropped first upon his knees and
then upon his face. A life for a life was no bad bargain.

But it was only a short respite which the skill of his comrades had
given to the young archer. Over the parapet there appeared a ball of
brass, then a pair of great brazen shoulders, and lastly the full figure
of an armored man. He walked to the edge and they heard his hoarse
guffaw of laughter as the arrows clanged and clattered against his
impenetrable mail. He slapped his breast-plate, as he jeered at them.
Well he knew that at the distance no dart ever sped by mortal hands
could cleave through his plates of metal. So he stood, the great burly
Butcher of La Brohiniere, with head uptossed, laughing insolently at
his foes. Then with slow and ponderous tread he walked toward his boy
victim, seized him by the ear, and dragged him across so that the rope
might be straight. Seeing that the noose had slipped across the face,
he tried to push it down, but the mail glove hampering him he pulled it
off, and grasped the rope above the lad's head with his naked hand.

Quick as a flash old Wat's arrow had sped, and the Butcher sprang back
with a howl of pain, his hand skewered by a cloth-yard shaft. As he
shook it furiously at his enemies a second grazed his knuckles. With
a brutal kick of his metal-shod feet he hurled young Alspaye over the
edge, looked down for a few moments at his death agonies, and then
walked slowly from the parapet, nursing his dripping hand, the arrows
still ringing loudly upon his back-piece as he went.

The archers below, enraged at the death of their comrades, leaped and
howled like a pack of ravening wolves.

"By Saint Dunstan," said Percy, looking round at their flushed faces,
"if ever we are to carry it now is the moment, for these men will not be
stopped if hate can take them for