spokes of the wheel. At the same instant a
score of men leapt out, who had been concealed beneath the loose
hay.

All was alarm and confusion. The few defenders of the castle were
overpowered and slain, for the gross treachery practised upon the
"merrie men" a few days earlier had hardened their hearts and
rendered them deaf to the call for pity or mercy. The few women who
were in the castle fled shrieking to their hiding places. The men
died fighting.

"To the dungeons! Show us the way to the dungeons, and we give you
your life," cried their leader--Kynewulf--to an individual whose
bunch of keys attached to his girdle showed his office.

"The friar is safe below, unhurt. I will take you to him. But I
have no key."

"Where is it, then?"

"Sir Drogo has taken it with him."

"We will have it open.

"Friar Martin, art thou within?"

"Safe and uninjured. Is it thou, Kynewulf? Then I charge thee that
thou do no hurt to any here. They have not injured me."

"Not injured thee, to place thee here! Well, we will soon have thee
out. We have promised Grimbeard to bring thee to him, or forfeit
our lives. He is dying."

"Dying! And I not there! What has chanced?"

"He was hit by one of those arrows the treacherous Drogo shot from
the wall while the flag of truce was yet flying, when we first came
to demand thee. But we must work to relieve thee."

And toil they did, but all in vain. They had no tools to force that
iron door.

Meanwhile a sound of scuffling drew other members of the band to a
chamber in the tower, where the good knight Ralph de Monceux was
confined, and as they approached they heard a heavy fall and found
Marboeuf lying dead on the floor, his skull cleft asunder, whilst
over him stood Ralph, axe in hand.

The "merrie men" knew their bold captive.

"Ah! How is this? What ox hast thou felled?"

"Only a butcher who came in to slay me, but I avoided the blow,
flew suddenly at his wrist and mastered the weapon, when I gave him
what at Oxford we called quid pro quo, as we strewed the shambles
with boves boreales."

They did not understand his Latin, but they knew Marboeuf, who, as
the reader will comprehend, seeing all was lost, had striven to
perform his vow, and happily had begun first with this dexterous
young knight. Hence they found the poor mayor of Hamelsham safe and
sound, only a little less afraid of the "merrie men" than of Drogo;
for often had they rifled the castle and robbed the hen r