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If you throw me, it is thine; but, if I throw you, then you are under a vow to take bow and bill and hie with me to France, there to serve in the White Company as long as we be enrolled." "A fair wager!" cried all the travellers, moving back their benches and trestles, so as to give fair field for the wrestlers. "Then you may bid farewell to your bed, soldier," said Hordle John.
He turned, with some wild intention of retracing his steps, but at the instant a great jagged rock, hurled by a brawny peasant, struck him full upon the ear, and he dropped senseless to the ground. "This is key enough for me!" quoth Hordle John, picking up the huge stone, and hurling it against the door with all the strength of his enormous body.
He comes from Hordle, and this is his mother who hath come forth to welcome him." "You rammucky lurden," she was howling, with a blow between each catch of her breath, "you shammocking, yaping, over-long good-for-nought. I will teach thee! I will baste thee! Aye, by my faith!"
I have won the ram more times than there are toes to my feet, and for seven long years I have found no man in the Company who could make my jerkin dusty." "We have had enough bobance and boasting," said Hordle John, rising and throwing off his doublet. "I will show you that there are better men left in England than ever went thieving to France."
"By the Virgin!" said a second, "I think that you may both chance to find yourselves upon the road before long." "And so belabored as to be scarce able to crawl along it," cried a third. "Nay, I shall go! I shall go!" said Alleyne hurriedly, as Hordle John began to slowly roll up his sleeve, and bare an arm like a leg of mutton. "I would not have you brawl about me."
"Pardieu!" said Sir Nigel, "if they are all like their messenger, they are indeed men of whom a leader may be proud. Your name, good archer?" "Sam Aylward, sir, of the Hundred of Easebourne and the Rape of Chichester." "And this giant behind you?" "He is big John, of Hordle, a forest man, who hath now taken service in the Company." "A proper figure of a man at-arms," said the little knight.
Fiercely he strove to disengage his weapon, but Hordle John bent his arm slowly back until, with a sharp crack, like a breaking stave, it turned limp in his grasp, and the mace dropped from the nerveless fingers. In vain he tried to pluck it up with the other hand.
The nail I must have, and I will give it to the abbey of Beaulieu, so that all the folk in England may go thither to wonder and to pray." "And I will have the stone from the temple," cried Hordle John. "What would not my old mother give to have it hung over her bed?" "And I will have Aaron's rod," quoth Aylward. "I have but five florins in the world, and here are four of them."
"I sang that ditty in Hordle ale-house ere I ever thought to be an archer myself," quoth he. "Fill up your stoups!" cried Black Simon, thrusting his own goblet into the open hogshead in front of him. "Here is a last cup to the White Company, and every brave boy who walks behind the roses of Loring!" "To the wood, the flax, and the gander's wing!" said an old gray-headed archer on the right.
They were pretty, blue-eyed, yellow-haired lads, well made and sturdy, with bronzed skins, which spoke of a woodland life. "Here are young chips from an old bow stave!" cried the soldier in great delight. "This is the proper way to raise children. By my hilt! I could not have trained them better had I the ordering of it myself." "What is it then?" asked Hordle John.
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