Page:A C Doyle - The White Company.djvu/87

Rh which was too intent upon the high things of antiquity to stoop to consider the fourpence which he owed for bed and board. It was the shrill outcry of the landlady when she found her loss, and the clucking of the hens, which had streamed in through the open door, that first broke in upon the slumbers of the tired wayfarers.

Once afoot, it was not long before the company began to disperse. A sleek mule with red trappings was brought round from some neighbouring shed for the physician, and he ambled away with much dignity upon his road to Southampton. The tooth-drawer and the gleeman called for a cup of small ale apiece, and started off together for Eingwood Fair, the old jongleur looking very yellow in the eye and swollen in the face after his overnight potations. The archer, however, who had drunk more than any man in the room, was as merry as a grig, and having kissed the matron and chased the maid up the ladder once more, he went out to the brook, and came back with the water dripping from his face and hair.

'Holà! my man of peace,' he cried to Alleyne, 'whither are you bent this morning?'

'To Minstead,' quoth he. 'My brother Simon Edricson is socman there, and I go to bide with him for a while. I prythee, let me have my score, good dame.'

'Score, indeed!' cried she, standing with upraised hands in front of the panel on which Alleyne had worked the night before. 'Say, rather, what it is that I owe to thee, good youth. Aye, this is indeed a pied merlin, and with a leveret under its claws, as I am a living woman. By the rood of Waltham! but thy touch is deft and dainty.' 'And see the red eye of it!' cried the maid.

'Aye, and the open beak.'

'And the ruffled wing,' added Hordle John.

'By my hilt!' cried the archer, 'it is the very bird itself.'

The young clerk flushed with pleasure at this chorus of praise, rude and indiscriminate indeed, and yet so much