IN A TWINKLING, ARMED AND MOUNTED MEN WERE ALL ABOUT US
Then of a sudden we heard iron-shod hoofs on the roadway and a man’s rough voice in surprise and angry threatening:
“Hold! What have we here? By’r Lady! ’tis the Mountjoys!”
In a twinkling, armed and mounted men were all about us; and with a heart like lead I recognized the Carleton livery. We could neither fight nor fly. Half a dozen stout men-at-arms leaped from their horses and rushed upon us. We had not struck a blow ere they overthrew us and wrenched our weapons from our hands. In a moment more my hands and Cedric’s were fast bound with halters like those of scurvy thieves that go to pay their penalty upon the gibbet.
“Ha! Look but here!” cried the leader, whom I now saw to be none other than the man who had so sworn against us at the trial at Shrewsbury, “these are young Sir Richard and the forester that slew Sir Lionel but six months gone. And now we come on them again red-handed. See this foul wickedness that they have done! What say you now? Shall we not rope them up to yonder limb in requital?”
“Aye, Aye! Let’s hang them and quickly,” cried another.
“Men of Carleton,” said I from where I lay upon the ground, “we are no murderers. But if slay us ye must, let us at least have the death of men and soldiers. I am the heir of a noble house that yields no jot to any Carleton; and my comrade here is a freeman of England with no smirch on his name. ’Tis not fitting that ye visit on us the punishment of thieves.”
“Ho!” jeered the leader, “hear the young hound of Mountjoy, now caught in the sheepfold. ’Tis like if we listen to him that he and this Pelham varlet will yet concoct some plan to ’scape us. Quick, men! the halters! For we have other and sadder work to do.”
Then for a moment all the forest and the blue sky seemed to turn to blackness around me. There was a roaring in my ears like to that I heard when as a child I fell one day from the foot board over the waters of the mill race and came not up to breathe till I reached the other side of the whirlpool below. Then from the midst of this reeling nightmare I heard a voice, saying faintly: