Page:A C Doyle - The White Company.djvu/67

Rh the cottage over long. For three hundred years my folk have swinked and sweated, day in and day out, to keep the wine on the lord's table and the harness on the lord's back. Let him take off his plates and delve himself, if delving must be done.'

'A proper spirit, my fair son!' said one of the free labourers. 'I would that all men were of thy way of thinking.'

'He would have sold me with his acres,' the other cried, in a voice which was hoarse with passion. '"The man, the woman, and their litter"—so ran the words of the dotard bailiff. Never a bullock on the farm was sold more lightly. Ha! he may wake some black night to find the flames licking about his ears—for fire is a good friend to the poor man, and I have seen a smoking heap of ashes where overnight there stood just such another castlewick as Ashby.'

'This is a lad of metal!' shouted another of the labourers. 'He dares to give tongue to what all men think. Are we not all from Adam's loins, all with flesh and blood, and with the same mouth that must needs have food and drink? Where all this difference, then, between the ermine cloak and the leathern tunic, if what they cover is the same?'

'Aye, Jenkin,' said another, 'our foeman is under the stole and the vestment as much as under the helmet and plate of proof. We have as much to fear from the tonsure as from the hauberk. Strike at the noble and the priest shrieks, strike at the priest and the noble lays his hand upon glaive. They are twin thieves who live upon our labour.'

'It would take a clever man to live upon thy labour, Hugh,' remarked one of the foresters, 'seeing that the half of thy time is spent in swilling mead at the "Pied Merlin."'

'Better that than stealing the deer that thou art placed to guard, like some folk I know.' 'If you dare open that swine's mouth against me,' shouted the woodman, 'I'll crop your ears for you before the hangman has the doing of it, thou long-jawed lackbrain.'

'Nay, gentles, gentles!' cried Dame Eliza, in a