Page:A C Doyle - The White Company.djvu/322

292 But here on a lone roadside, with thick woods and robber-knights, I turn to you, for it is the business to which you have been reared.'

'There is sooth in what you say, Master Micheldene,' said Sir Nigel, 'and I trust that we may come upon this Roger Club-foot, for I have heard that he is a very stout and skilful soldier, and a man from whom much honour is to be gained.'

'He is a bloody robber,' said the trader, curtly, 'and I wish I saw him kicking at the end of a halter.'

'It is such men as he,' Sir Nigel remarked, 'who give the true knight honourable deeds to do, whereby he may advance himself.'

'It is such men as he,' retorted Micheldene, 'who are like rats in a wheat-rick or moth in a woolfels, a harm and a hindrance to all peaceful and honest men.'

'Yet, if the dangers of the road weigh so heavily upon you, master alderman, it is a great marvel to me that you should venture so far from home.'

'And, sometimes, sir knight, it is a marvel to myself. But I am a man who may grutch and grumble, but when I have set my face to do a thing I will not turn my back upon it until it be done. There is one François Villet, at Cahors, who will send me wine-casks for my cloth-bales, so to Cahors I will go, though all the robber-knights of Christendom were to line the roads like yonder poplars.' 'Stoutly spoken, master alderman! But how have you fared hitherto?'

'As a lamb fares in a land of wolves. Five times we have had to beg and pray ere we could pass. Twice I have paid toll to the wardens of the road. Three times we have had to draw, and once at La Réolle we stood over our wool-bales, Watkin and I, and we laid about us for as long as a man might chant a litany, slaying one rogue and wounding two others. By God's coif! we are men of peace, but we are free English burghers, not to be mishandled either in our country or abroad. Neither lord, baron, knight, nor commoner