Page:A C Doyle - The White Company.djvu/111

Rh to vill, from hundred to hundred, until you are taken as a common robber and a scourge to the country.'

The outlaw sank his club. 'The Socman's brother!' he gasped. 'Now, by the keys of Peter! I had rather that hand withered and tongue was palsied ere I had struck or miscalled you. If you are the Socman's brother you are one of the right side, I warrant, for all your clerkly dress.'

'His brother I am,' replied Alleyne. 'But even if I were not, is that reason why you should molest me on the king's ground?'

'I give not the pip of an apple for king or for noble,' cried the serf passionately. 'Ill have I had from them, and ill I shall repay them. I am a good friend to my friends, and, by the Virgin! an evil foeman to my foes.'

'And therefore the worst of foemen to thyself,' said Alleyne. 'But I pray you since you seem to know him, to point out to me the shortest path to my brother's house.'

The serf was about to reply, when the clear ringing call of a bugle burst from the wood close behind them, and Alleyne caught sight for an instant of the dun side and white breast of a lordly stag glancing swiftly betwixt the distant tree trunks. A minute later came the shaggy deer-hounds, a dozen or fourteen of them, running on a hot scent, with nose to earth and tail in air. As they streamed past the silent forest around broke suddenly into loud life, with galloping of hoofs, crackling of brushwood, and the short sharp cries of the hunters. Close behind the pack rode a fourrier and a yeoman-pricker, whooping on the laggards and encouraging the leaders, in the shrill half-French jargon which was the language of venery and wood-craft. Alleyne was still gazing after them, listening to the loud 'Hyke-a-Bayard! Hyke-a-Pomers! Hyke-a-Lebryt!' with which they called upon their favourite hounds, when a group of horsemen crashed out through the underwood at the very spot where the serf and he were standing.

The one who led was a man between fifty and sixty years of age, war-worn and weather-beaten, with a broad