Page:A C Doyle - The White Company.djvu/117

Rh hooded hawk screamed with ruffled wings and pecked blindly in its mistress's defence. Bird and maid, however, had but little chance against their assailant, who, laughing loudly, caught her wrist in one hand while he drew her towards him with the other.

'The best rose has ever the longest thorns,' said he. 'Quiet, little one, or you may do yourself a hurt. Must pay Saxon toll on Saxon land, my proud Maude, for all your airs and graces.'

'You boor!' she hissed. 'You base underbred clod! Is this your care and your hospitality? I would rather wed a branded serf from my father's fields. Leave go, I say Ah! good youth, Heaven has sent you. Make him loose me? By the honour of your mother, I pray you to stand by me and to make this knave loose me.'

'Stand by you I will, and that blithely,' said Alleyne. 'Surely, sir, you should take shame to hold the damsel against her will.'

The man turned a face upon him which was lion-like in its strength and in its wrath. With his tangle of golden hair, his fierce blue eyes, and his large, well-marked features, he was the most comely man whom Alleyne had ever seen; and yet there was something so sinister and so fell in his expression that child or beast might well have shrunk from him. His brows were drawn, his cheek flushed, and there was a mad sparkle in his eyes which spoke of a wild untamable nature.

'Young fool!' he cried, holding the woman still to his side, though every line of her shrinking figure spoke her abhorrence. 'Do you keep your spoon in your own broth. I rede you to go on your way, lest worse befall you. This little wench has come with me, and with me she shall bide.'

'Liar!' cried the woman; and, stooping her head, she suddenly bit fiercely into the broad brown hand which held her. He whipped it back with an oath, while she tore herself free and slipped behind Alleyne, cowering up against