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Now, it happened soon after, that her Grace and Clara went away one day into the town to purchase a jerkin for the little Prince Casimir, who accompanied them. Sidonia was immediately informed of their absence, and sought out Clara's maid without delay, put a piece of gold into her hand, and said
There, too, appeared Foy van Goorl and Red Martin, who led a pack mule; Foy dressed in the grey jerkin of a merchant, but armed with a sword and mounted on a good mare; Martin riding a Flemish gelding that nowadays would only have been thought fit for the plough, since no lighter-boned beast could carry his weight.
Sim had crept up, and, standing behind Ralph, was plucking at his jerkin. Ralph turned about and looked wistfully into the old man's face. For an instant his purpose wavered. "For the love of God," cried the sheriff, "for your own life's sake, for this poor man's sake, by all that is near and dear to both, I charge you, if you are an innocent man, give me the means to prove you such."
He smiled, and just for a moment laid his hand upon her head; then he drew on his mailed gloves and looked well to the buckles of the stout leathern jerkin, almost as impervious to the stabs of his foes as a suit of mail itself. The temper of his weapon he well knew; he had no fear that it would play him false.
For instance, a woman who had fashioned for her husband a rudely knitted vest of wool of her own spinning; would bring the rather dingy garment to Frau Gensfleisch to have it made red or blue, so that, worn under his brown leather jerkin, it might look smart and gay; or the young hunter, on going to the chase, would come to her to have the tassels of his bow or horn made scarlet or yellow; or the knight equipping himself for war would send to her the soiled plume of his helmet, to be made of a brilliant crimson to say nothing of the knight's lady, who, as she sat at home in her dismal castle, with little else to amuse her but the embroidery frame, would be forever sending down her maidens and serving-men into the valley with skeins of wool and silk, to be dipped into Frau Gensfleisch's dye-pots, and brought back to her of every color of the rainbow.
I remember that he had monstrous long arms, which hung almost to his knees, and a great hairy breast which showed through a rent in his seaman's jerkin. In that strange place, with the dripping spell of night about me, and the fire casting weird lights and shadows, he seemed like some devil of the hills awakened by magic from his ancient grave. But I saw it was time for me to be speaking up.
He stood with his back to the window, a sturdy, erect, soldierly figure, a little above the middle height, dressed like a captain of fortune in jerkin and long boots of grey leather, and a grey hat with a wine-coloured ostrich plume. His countenance matched his raiment.
Close on two hundred men had come with Prat, the son of the sheriff of Sudbury, at their head, and they were not to be despised, for they were sturdy spearmen, and many had mail, though the most wore the stout leathern jerkin that will turn a sword cut well enough. And Prat asked that they should have the first place in the fight, seeing that they fought for their own land.
Desultory or semi-civilised warfare, where the play of the human passions is distinctly visible, where individual man, whether in buff jerkin or Milan coat of proof, meets his fellow man in close mortal combat, where men starve by thousands or are massacred by town-fulls, where hamlets or villages blaze throughout whole districts or are sunk beneath the ocean scenes of rage, hatred, vengeance, self- sacrifice, patriotism, where all the virtues and vices of which humanity is capable stride to and fro in their most violent colours and most colossal shape where man in a moment rises almost to divinity, or sinks beneath the beasts of the field such tragical records of which the sanguinary story of mankind is full and no portion of them more so than the Netherland chronicles appeal more vividly to the imagination than the neatest solution of mathematical problems.
There was a comedown now of feathered hats, and point collars, and curled hair; and leathern jerkin should have its day. And as for being an informer, he would keep his own counsel; at any rate, the reward he would have. It was scarcely likely to be a hanging matter, after all; and if the gentleman, whoever he might be, did chance to be taken, he would get off scot free, no harm done to him.
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