, and came out all
covered with flour, while men sang:

The King of the Romans gathered a host,
And made him a castle of a mill post.

Meanwhile the camp on the hill, with the banner and the aforesaid
litter, had aroused the attention of Prince Edward, just returning
from harrying the Londoners.

"Up the hill, my men," he said. "There is the very devil himself in
that litter."

The camp was stoutly defended, but after a while the defenders were
forced to fly by superior force. Then the prince's men rushed upon
the litter, Drogo of Walderne foremost. They thought they had got
the great earl.

"Come out, Simon, thou devil, thou worst of traitors," they cried.

Within were only the four shrinking, timid burgesses, and Drogo and
his band dragged them out, shrieking in vain that they were for the
king, and cut them to pieces, poor unfortunates. But they did not
find Earl Simon, and only slew their own friends; and when the
confusion was over they looked down upon the battlefield, where one
glance showed them that the main battle was lost, and the barons in
possession of the field.

In vain Edward besought his men, now much reduced in numbers, to
make another charge. They saw the enemy waiting with levelled
lances to receive them, and felt that the position they were asked
to assail was impregnable.

Edward was a most affectionate son, and was very anxious to learn
the fate of his royal father, so he determined to force his way to
the priory at all hazards, and made a circuit of the town so as to
reach the sacred pile from the unassailed quarter. Night was now
approaching, and the prince's party had to fight their way at every
step with the victorious horsemen of the barons. Edward's giant
strength and long sweeping sword made him a way over heaps of
corpses strewn before him, but others were less fortunate.

Hard by the river, on the eastern side of the town, and beneath the
high cliffs which rise almost precipitously to the isolated group
of downs, there was a terrible charge, a hand-to-hand melee. Drogo
of Walderne and Harengod, his sword red with blood, his lance
couched, was confronted here by a knight in sable armour, his sole
cognisance--the White Cross.

They rode at each other. Drogo's lance grazed his opponent's
casque: the unknown knight drove his missile through corselet and
breast, and Drogo went down crashing from his steed. The combat
went sweeping on past them, the desperate foes fighting as the