“Bread and cheese.”
“It is well; thou shalt be Sir Ralph’s messenger, and shall be set free, upon a solemn promise to do our behests.
“Now set forth the next in order, and let him say, ‘Shibboleth.’”
It was an olive-skinned rogue, fresh from Southern France, who stepped forward this time, impelled by his captors. Asked the same question, he replied:
“Dis bread and dat sheese {[26]}.”
“Hang him,” said Grimbeard, and hanged he would doubtless have been, for a dozen hands were busy at once in their cruel glee; some seizing upon the victim, some mocking his pronunciation, some preparing the rope, two or three boys climbing the tree like monkeys, to assist in drawing it over a sufficiently stout branch to bear the human weight, while the poor Gaul stood shivering below; when Martin threw his left arm around the victim, and raised his crucifix on high with the other.
“Ye shall not harm him, unless ye trample under foot the sign of your redemption.”
“Who forbids?” said Grimbeard.
“I, the representative by birth of your ancestral leaders, and one who might now claim the allegiance you have paid to my fathers for generations. But I rest not on that,” and here he pleaded so eloquently in the name of Christ, that even Grimbeard was moved; he could not resist a certain ascendency which Martin was gaining over him.
“Let them go, all of them. Blindfold them and lead them out in the road. Only they must swear not to come into our haunts again, either with hawk and hound or with deadlier weapons.