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All agreed in declaring that it would take many years to repair the waste which had been wrought in a few weeks by the armed peasantry, Some of the Saxon aristocracy had mansions richly furnished, and sideboards gorgeous with silver bowls and chargers. All this wealth disappeared.
The other knights followed in order, all attended by their esquires and their grooms. Each knight was greatly applauded, and it was really a grand sight to see them on their barded chargers and in their panoply; some in suits of engraved Milanese armour, some in German suits of fluted polished steel; some in steel armour engraved and inlaid with gold.
That morning there was a glint of sun in the opalescent clouds: horse-boys in grey with double roses worked on their chests were spreading sand in the great quadrangle, fenced in with white palings, between the buildings where the chargers were trained to the manage.
Their chargers hit and tore at each other's manes; they were twined in together there as if they were but one man and one beast; they shook and they swayed and they rocked; the sabers played about their heads so quick that it was like lightning, as they flashed and twirled in the sun; the hoofs trampled up the sand till a yellow cloud hid their struggle, and out of it all you could see was the head of a horse tossing up and spouting with foam, or a sword-blade lifted to strike.
Besides the human beings, there were cattle and sheep destined for the butcher's knife cows to afford milk to the lady passengers, the invalids, and the children even horses were on board, valuable racers or chargers, belonging to some of the military officers; there were several head of sheep penned up in the long-boat; and there were pigsties full of grunting occupants, who seemed to be more happy and to have made themselves far more at home than any of their four-footed fellow-voyagers.
Through the dust, the sun picked out the flash of lances and the gloss of chargers' flanks, flushed rows and rows of determined faces, found the least touch of gold on faded uniforms, silvered the sad grey of mitrailleuses and munition waggons.
It would always be one of the weaker sort; pale-faced lads he could never endure. And occasionally in other ways the rough animal nature of the man would show itself. If any one got hurt, Heppner was the first to run up not to help, but to see the blood; he would watch it flow with unmistakable pleasure in his eager eyes. His special forte was the breaking-in of chargers.
In their centre stood the prisoner. On, again, dashed the chargers scarcely a hundred yards separated them from the palace-gate. Wildly Marie glanced back once more there were figures on the scaffold. And at that moment borne in the stillness more loudly, more heavily than usual, or, at least, so it seemed to her tortured senses the huge bell of the castle chimed the hour of noon!
On high their glittering crests they toss, As springs the wild-fire from the moss; The shield hangs down on every breast, Each ready lance is in the rest, And loud shouts Edward Bruce: "Forth, marshal! on the peasant foe We'll tame the terrors of their bow, And cut the bow-string loose!" Then spurs were dashed in chargers' flanks, They rushed among the archer ranks.
Their richly caparisoned chargers, their waving plumes, their wild battle-cries, and their marvellous skill with carbine and sword, lent picturesqueness and terror to the charge.
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