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"All ready, Samkin?" "Ready, camarade." "Close to your hand then." With an easy pull he sent the shaft flickering gently up, falling upon the stonework within a foot of where Aylward was standing. The other end was secured to the rope, so that in a minute a good strong cord was dangling from the only sound side of the blazing and shattered tower.
"It is ill weather for bows," remarked John at last, when, with a long sigh, he drained the last drop from his helmet. "My strings are as limp as a cow's tail this morning." "You should rub them with water glue," quoth Johnston. "You remember, Samkin, that it was wetter than this on the morning of Crecy, and yet I cannot call to mind that there was aught amiss with our strings."
Look me in the eye, old hothead, and tell me if you would have stood by while the last Loring look at him as he rides with his head in the air and his soul in the clouds was shot down before your very eyes at the bidding of that fat monk! If you would, then I disown you as my father." "Nay, Samkin, if it was like that, then perhaps what you did was not so far amiss.
"Could you not have clapped a sword in his fist and let him take his chance in the hall?" "Nay, Samkin, if you had such memories as I, you would have wished that he should die like a sheep and not like a man. What chance did he give me when he had the power? And why should I treat him better? But, Holy Virgin, what have we here?" At the farther end of the table a woman was standing.
It has been my wont to choose a saddle-backed feather for a dead shaft, and a swine-backed for a smooth flier. I will take the two of them. Ah! Samkin, lad, the eye grows dim and the hand less firm as the years pass." "Come then, are you not ready?" said the Brabanter, who had watched with ill-concealed impatience the slow and methodic movements of his antagonist.
A moment later the door of the hall was flung open, and a shouting stumbling throng came crowding forth, with whoop and yell, into the silent night. Linking arms and striking up a chorus, they marched past the peat-cutting, their voices dwindling slowly away as they made for their homes. "Now, Samkin, now!" cried Simon, and jumping out from the hiding-place he made for the door.
Which of you loosed it?" "It was Aylward of Tilford Samkin Aylward," cried a score of voices, and the bowman, flushed at his own fame, was pushed to the front. "Indeed I would that it had been at a nobler mark," said he. "He might have gone free for me, but I could not keep my fingers from the string when he turned to jeer at us."
Little did I think that Samkin Aylward could be turned into a weakling by an hour of salt water. Alas the day that ever my foot wandered from the good red heather of Crooksbury!" Cock Badding laughed loud and long. "Nay, take it not to heart, archer," he cried; "for better men than you or I have groaned upon this deck.
But the stout red-faced farmer shook his head at the proposal. "Not I, in faith!" said he. "The beast hath chased me twice round the paddock; it has nigh slain my boy Samkin. He would never be happy till he had ridden it, nor has he ever been happy since. There is not a hind in my employ who will enter his stall.
"But I have seen you, Johnston, and you, Samkin Aylward, and one or two others who are still with us, shoot as well as the best. Was it not you, Johnston, who took the fat ox at Finsbury butts against the pick of London town?"
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